url stringlengths 37 208 | title stringlengths 4 148 | author stringclasses 173
values | publish_date stringclasses 1
value | categories listlengths 0 12 | tags listlengths 0 27 | featured_image stringlengths 0 272 | content stringlengths 0 56.1k | comments_count int64 0 900 | scraped_comments_count int64 0 50 | comments listlengths 0 50 | scraped_at float64 1.76B 1.76B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/29/gilded-hello-kitty-ax-made-using-electrolysis/ | Gilded Hello Kitty Ax Made Using Electrolysis | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"art",
"ax",
"electrolysis",
"hello kitty",
"high voltage"
] | Ummm…. cute? For the Hello Kitty fan who has everything?
Yeah, we’re really not sure what’s going on here. It’s an art piece on which [Denis] spent a lot of time. He polished it, etched it, painted it, applied gold leaf, and drilled a hole for a charm. It’s that hole which interested us the most. He had a heck of a time figuring out how to make a hole in the hardened steel. The solution that finally worked was to
use electrolysis to bore through the metal
(
translated
).
[Denis] first made a small depression where he wanted the hole. This took time, and pretty much ate through the engraver bit he was using. But it was just enough to hold a drop of saline. He connected the positive side of his power supply to the ax head, then dipped the negative lead into the drop of saline. Each time the drop turned black he wiped it away and replaced it with fresh solution. Just five hours of this and a pack or two of cotton swabs and he was through. | 36 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "761637",
"author": "Glen Hinckley",
"timestamp": "2012-08-29T19:08:35",
"content": "DRILLBIT",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "761662",
"author": "vonslatt",
"timestamp": "2012-08-29T19:20:38",
"content":... | 1,760,376,758.099722 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/29/umbrella-based-windmills/ | Umbrella-based Windmills | Mike Szczys | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"anemometer",
"bubbles",
"generator",
"Music box",
"umbrella",
"wind",
"windmill"
] | [Niklas Roy] is at it again. He’s
applying wind power to his projects by using umbrellas
. He was inspired by the shape of an anemometer, and umbrellas turned out to be a great choice because they’re cheap and easy to find.
Anemometers measure wind speed by capturing it with egg-shaped sails (in fact, we’ve seen them
built from plastic Easter eggs
before). The umbrellas have a much larger area and will capture more wind. Still it’s a big jump from measuring wind speed to generating energy. That’s why he’s not trying to generate electricity, but instead using the mechanical force directly. He took a page from
one of last year’s projects
and used the dual umbrella setup to power a music box, thereby reinventing the wind chime. The triple-umbrella unit seen above serves as a bubble machine, driving a series of plastic rings through a soapy solution and letting the wind do the rest. We’ve embedded his demo video after the break. | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "761540",
"author": "Zee",
"timestamp": "2012-08-29T18:22:52",
"content": "It’s a nice art project but using umbrellas is just pointless. Wind is their main enemy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "762678",
"author": "The... | 1,760,376,757.674557 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/29/what-does-the-government-think-about-that-drone-in-your-home/ | What Does The Government Think About That Drone In Your Home? | Caleb Kraft | [
"News"
] | [
"drones",
"uav"
] | The world is buzzing about drones right now. Even we’re joining in the fun with some antics of our own. Right now, it is basically a legal free-for all since no one is enforcing regulation, but is that about to change? Should it?
Lets start off by establishing the definition of a “drone”. For this article,
we’ll settle for
any “unmanned aerial vehicle”, though we can all agree that that limiting this to airspace is fairly restrictive. This is the specific type that are making the news right now and quite possibly catching the eye of people who make the rules.
During my fun exploring the different ways to cause a little mischief by hacking a fairly limited Parrot AR Drone, I met some resistance on user forums from people concerned that I would usher in a new set of legislation restricting the use of drones by weaponizing them. While we all can agree that irresponsible use of dangerous things is bad, the idea that
my little taserDrone
would garner government attention was laughable.
However, I felt that a little research was necessary into how the FAA feels about drones, since it seems that everyone is putting them in the air. I found some interesting things. Most notably, the modifications of adding further flight distance and better cameras seems to be the biggest concern for people, and is likely to be the cause of legislation due to privacy issues.
At present, the
FAA already has regulation in place for drones
and has for some time. To use one above 400 feet, you must be registered with the FAA and issued a certificate, of which they’ve only issued a few hundred. The law also states that you can not use the drone for commercial purposes. This has actually become an issue as one real estate company
found out when they started hiring drones
to photograph the properties they were listing.
With the swarm on the horizon, the FAA realizes they have to approach this. They’ve created an entire office dedicated to integrating drones into airspace an are actually attempting to
loosen up the restrictions for drone use
. Keep in mind, however, that this doesn’t just mean [Joe] next door with his hacked AR Drone, but
also the police
. This is a big deal to
many who already feel like they live in a current state surveillance
. This year the FAA actually
had a presence and spoke at the Unmanned Vehicle Systems International trade show
in Los Vegas, for the first time in its 39 year run.
So it seems that the prime concerns surrounding drones right now are air safety and privacy. We all know they can be weaponized. We’ve all seen the military drones. Apparently, a gun mounted on a drone is no more scary than a gun on a hip or on a car. What people are more concerned about are prying eyes. So when I attempt to strap a bottle rocket to my drone, maybe people shouldn’t freak out. Maybe they should actually reconsider strapping
that high definition camera to their drone and flying it over their neighborhood
.
Then again, this is hackaday. All we ask is that you don’t hurt anyone and try to show a little respect to eachother while you do whatever you want to that thing you OWN. | 86 | 36 | [
{
"comment_id": "761272",
"author": "Afam",
"timestamp": "2012-08-29T16:28:09",
"content": "you could use drones to create forest fires without leaving any evidence.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "761653",
"author": "shrader",
... | 1,760,376,758.024393 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/29/camera-dollies-hacked-together-by-stop-motion-filmmakers/ | Camera Dollies Hacked Together By Stop Motion Filmmakers | Mike Szczys | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"3.5mm",
"dolly",
"film",
"scanner",
"stop motion"
] | A little bit of technology goes a long way when it comes to stop motion animation. In this case it’s
a trio of simple camera dollies
built during production of a short film called
The Maker
.
A Dolly is a method of mounting the camera so that it can be moved smoothly during a shot. Of course with stop motion the movement actually happens between the shots so it’s even more important that the camera be moved accurately. The video after the break shows off how they added CNC control for the camera. The first dolly was built from a pair of PVC pipes with a sled that moves along them. A motor moves a loop of 35mm film which is attached to the dolly. This is a great choice of materials since it doesn’t stretch and it’s free (one of the filmmakers is a projectionist). The next dolly is made from a flatbed scanner, and the final offering is seen above. Built from a bicycle wheel it provides a stationary platform above the hub for the models, while the camera rotates on an arm attached to the wheel. You can
watch the complete film here
.
If you’re looking for more inspiration check out
this dual-axis PVC dolly project
. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "762142",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2012-08-30T03:08:24",
"content": "Watch the movie first. It’s awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "907006",
"author": "charginout",
"timestamp": "2012-12-20T19:21:51",
... | 1,760,376,757.777183 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/29/how-to-control-your-cheap-rc-car-with-a-computer/ | How To Control Your Cheap RC Car With A Computer | Jeremy Cook | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"R/C car",
"toy"
] | [Jon] wrote in to tell us about his programmable RC car, and
the Howto guide
that he’s made. According to him, this project can be constructed with $9 worth of parts plus an Arduino and a small toy car. So around $50 if you’re starting from scratch.
At it’s core, this project is about using the Arduino to allow your computer to send signals to the toy car. For this, [Jon] has included JAVA code that should be able to run on Mac, Linux, and PC operating systems. The Arduino code is also included.
Most small RC cars like those used in this project switch on at full speed or turn off, but this project allows the PC/Arduino to give the car PWM signals to control the speed. As pointed out in the video after the break, this can be a bit jerky at slow speed, but still a neat effect. A decent amount of soldering is required to get this project working, but it may be a good project especially if you have some of the parts already available!
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FMo39kSzBk&w=470&h=315%5D | 23 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "760646",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2012-08-29T12:09:12",
"content": "We did something similar in High School comp sci class. Made a cord that connected a laptop’s USB or Serial(I forget which now) to the trainer port on an R/C Airplane’s transmitter. Then wrote code to drive a... | 1,760,376,757.836381 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/30/can-a-kickstarter-project-actually-build-a-space-elevator/ | Can A Kickstarter Project Actually Build A Space Elevator? | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"balloon",
"carbon nanotube",
"ribbon",
"space elevator",
"Tether",
"weather balloon"
] | It’s the stuff that Science Fiction is made of: an elevator that climbs its way into space rather than needing a rocket to get there. Can it be done? No. But this Kickstarter project aims to
fund research that will eventually make a space elevator possible
. They’re already way over their goal, and plan to use the extra funds to extend the reach of the experiments.
A complete success would be
a tether that reaches into space
, held taught by a weight which is pulled away from earth by centrifugal force. That’s not really on the radar yet (last we heard humans weren’t capable of producing a substance strong enough to keep the tether from snapping). What is in the works is a weather balloon supporting a ribbon which a robot can climb. The team isn’t new to this, having built and tested several models at University and then in a start-up company that closed its doors a few years ago. Now they’re hoping to get a 3-5 kilometer ribbon in the air and to build a new robot to climb it.
For now we’ll have to be satisfied with the 1000 ft. climb video after the break. But we hope to see an Earth-Moon freight system like the one shown in the diagram above before the end of our lifetimes.
[Thanks uMinded] | 66 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "763297",
"author": "passerby",
"timestamp": "2012-08-30T17:45:29",
"content": "If you’re asking my permission…. No.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "763306",
"author": "walt",
"timestamp": "2012-08-30T17:48:18",
"cont... | 1,760,376,758.227579 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/30/portable-radio-station-gets-a-beautiful-case/ | Portable Radio Station Gets A Beautiful Case | Brian Benchoff | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"kerf",
"kerf bending",
"laser cutter"
] | [Martin] put together a simple portable radio unit to take some MP3s with him while he’s out and around. The build was simple; just a no-name Chinese MP3 player, a battery, and an FM radio transmitter. To give his project a little more pizzazz, he came up with a very handsome
laser cut wooden case
to turn what would be a bunch of wires and components into an attractive build.
[Martin]’s case makes wonderful use of the kerf bending technique. By cutting small staggered lines in a piece of plywood, [Martin] was able to bend his laser cut enclosure into a surprisingly tight radius. With the help of a pair of laser cut forms and a bit of hot water and glue, he was able to make the shape of his case permanent.
The top and bottom of his case are also laser cut plywood, but [Martin] included a translucent plexiglas logo on the top. When his radio unit is activated a LED inside his project box lights up, illuminating his personal logo.
Kerf bending is
something we’ve seen before
, and we’re looking forward to seeing more project boxes use it in the future, hopefully with the application of a veneer to cover the diamond-shaped holes. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "763011",
"author": "daid303",
"timestamp": "2012-08-30T15:42:17",
"content": "I really like the design of the UltiController, which is also made with bendable wood:https://shop.ultimaker.com/en/parts-and-upgrades/ulticontroller-ultipanel.htmlThe cuts of this FM radio transmitter are... | 1,760,376,757.729226 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/30/avr-fuse-bits-explained/ | AVR Fuse Bits Explained | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"AVR",
"avrdude",
"Fuse bits"
] | Every AVR microcontroller, from the ATtiny in your thermostat to the ATMega in your Arduino, stores its configuration in a series of fuse bits. These fuse bits control settings such as the multiplier of the internal oscillator (and thus the speed of the chip), or if the reset pin can be used as a GPIO pin. [YS] just put up
an awesome tutorial for understanding these fuse/lock bits
, and it’s just the reference guide you’ll need when you find your AVR is running 8 times slower than you would like.
As an example, [YS] uses the ATMega48 default settings. From the factory, the ‘Mega48 ships with it’s fuse bits set to use an 8MHz internal RC oscillator with the CKDIV8 bit set. This results in the chip operating at 1MHz, a bit slow for [YS]’ liking.
By looking at the datasheet for the ATMega48, [YS] found the CKDIV8 fuse was the 7th bit in the low fuse byte. From the factory, the default value for this byte is 0b01100010. To remove the ‘divide clock by 8’ bit, [YS] needed to change the low byte to 0b11100010, or 0xE2. This is done via
AVRdude
by appending lfuse:w:0xE2:m to the commands entered when programming.
Fuse bits don’t need to be scary. As long as you can convert between binary and hex, can remember there are 7 bits in a byte (remember to start counting from 0), and have access to
an easy to use fuse calculator
, it’s possible to change all the settings on any AVR you have on hand. | 50 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "762886",
"author": "birdmun",
"timestamp": "2012-08-30T14:43:29",
"content": "There are 8 bits in a byte.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "762894",
"author": "SavannahLion",
"timestamp": "2012-08-30T14:46:07",
... | 1,760,376,758.313041 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/30/rebuilding-the-electronics-in-a-remote-control-car/ | Rebuilding The Electronics In A Remote Control Car | Brian Benchoff | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"FSK",
"R/C car"
] | Inspired by the many autonomous rovers such as
Curiosity
and the self-driving Google car, [Rohit] decided to build his own by taking an off-the-shelf remote control car and adding his own electronics. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find the datasheet for the chip used to receive radio signals and drive the motors, so he ended up
building his own electronics
and putting them in the car.
[Rohit]’s car – the Thunder Rumbler RC Car – is driven by applying power to two motors. This is an easy system to control, as only two channels are needed to make the car go forward, left, right, or backwards. To drive these two motors, [Rohit] found an SN754410 quadruple half-H bridge driver chip lying in his box of assorted electronic components. Thanks to a
helpful instructable
, this chip was easily controlled with an Arduino.
That left the problem of sending a wireless signal to the Arduino. [Rohit] accomplished this by relying on an Android phone to provide the remote control.
[Rohit] whipped up a small program running on his desktop that allows him to send ‘L’, ‘R’, ‘U’, or ‘D’ to the Android phone to dictate if the car should go left, right, forward, or reverse. The Android phone receives these commands via the Internet and sends an audio signal through the headphone port. This audio signal is connected to two analog pins of the Arduino. With a little bit of software and a bit of reading up on
frequency shift keying
, [Rohit] was able to make his car move in any direction.
Even though [Rohit] realized his goal of controlling a remote control car on his own terms, the build is far from done. He plans on adding some ultrasonic sensors and using the Android’s camera for object detection. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "762963",
"author": "Dr. West",
"timestamp": "2012-08-30T15:24:13",
"content": "This is so awesome. I’m working on almost exactly the same project right now, and was stumped on how to send signals from my phone to my arduino. Thanks for sharing your code! :)",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,376,757.624789 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/30/building-a-driver-for-absurdly-high-power-leds/ | Building A Driver For Absurdly High Power LEDs | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"high power LED",
"LED driver",
"LT3518",
"RGB LED"
] | A few years ago, the highest power LEDs you could buy capped out around three watts. Now, LED manufacturers are taking things to ridiculous power ratings with 30, 40, and even 90 watt LEDs. Getting these high-power LEDs are no longer a problem, but powering them certainly is. [Thomas]
built a LED driver
capable of powering these gigantic LEDs and creating a light show that is probably bright enough to cause bit of eye damage.
[Thomas]’ LED driver is based on Linear Technology’s
LT3518 LED driver
. This driver is part of a project to build a huge WiFi controlled RGB LED, so the driver has outputs for three separate LEDs capable of sourcing 700 mA each.
Because [Thomas] is dealing with crazy amounts of heat and power required to light up these huge LEDs, the driver board features a temperature sensor next to each LED driver. When the board gets too hot, the driver automatically shuts down, preventing
bad things
from happening.
You can check out a few pictures of [Thomas]’ LED driver over on
the build page for his WiFi LED project
. A truly awesome amount of lighting power here, that also makes it impossible to get a good picture of the board in operation. | 26 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "762694",
"author": "hackcasual",
"timestamp": "2012-08-30T13:19:58",
"content": "700ma, that’s cute.Been meaning to write this up:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMKH_kqDPoIThat’s 1.4A per channel",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,376,757.900508 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/30/etching-your-own-pcbs-at-home/ | Etching Your Own PCBs At Home | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"etching",
"pcb",
"PCB etching",
"toner transfer"
] | Etching your own PCBs from copper clad board is nothing new, but the ability to make your own circuit boards at home is so useful it should be part of every maker’s repertoire of skills. The folks over at Hub City Labs in Moncton, NB, Canada put together
a workshop covering the basics of home PCB manufacturing
, allowing any maker to put a circuit board in their hands in under an hour.
The process starts just like any PCB design – laying out traces, parts, and vias in a PCB designer such as Eagle. When making your own boards, it’s a good idea to make the traces and pads extra large; the folks at Hub City Labs follow the 50-50 rule: 50 mil wide traces with 50 mils of seperation.
The PCB design is printed out with a laser printer (in mirror mode) onto a piece of paper from a glossy magazine or inkjet photo paper. After the copper board is scrubbed to remove any oxidation or oils present, the design is laid face down on the copper and heated with a clothes iron or sent through a laminator.
After the laser printer toner is transferred to the copper, the recipe calls for etching the board with a solution consisting of a half cup of 3% Hydrogen Peroxide and a quarter cup of muriatic acid.
The folks at Hub City Labs put together a great tutorial for one of the most useful skills the home electronics wizard can have, but etching your own PCBs is an art unto itself. There’s a lot of ways this process can be improved, from using Kapton tape to secure the printed art to the copper board, to getting high-strength peroxide from a beauty supply store.
If you’ve got any tips on making your own PCBs at home, drop a line in the comments below.
EDIT: Good job killing Hub City Lab’s web server, everybody. They’re working on getting something up. | 79 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "762527",
"author": "Josh Bradfield",
"timestamp": "2012-08-30T11:49:02",
"content": "I’ve even had success with regular printer paper! This is useful knowledge for poor uni students who can only use the university’s printers (i.e. they cannot load their own paper types).However, I f... | 1,760,376,758.539915 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/29/party-photo-printer-built-around-a-raspberry-pi/ | Party Photo Printer Built Around A Raspberry Pi | Mike Szczys | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"photo",
"photo booth",
"photo printer",
"pictures",
"printer",
"RPi"
] | We think [Brian Delacruz] latched on to a good idea with this photo printer project. Instead of building a big photo booth for his party he developed
a Raspberry Pi based WiFi photo printer
. Right now it’s a prototype that lacks the kind of polish necessary to make a true user-friendly device. But the idea is solid and just waiting for you to improve upon it.
In addition to the RPi he’s using a quality photo printer and a small wireless router. The router simply provides WiFi capabilities for the RPi which is running a web server, mySQL, and FTP. This provides a wide range of upload options which he can work with. Watch the video after the break to see him print a smart phone photo wirelessly.
This can be simplified by using a package like
hostapd
to use a USB WiFi dongle as an access point. Or if the venue already has Internet access a server could be set up with a QR code to guide people to it. The party starts off with an empty bulletin board and guests would be invited to print and hang their own photos which will go into the host’s guest book/scrap book to remember the event. | 12 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "761980",
"author": "HIrudinea",
"timestamp": "2012-08-29T22:59:58",
"content": "A good adaptation of this idea would be to ditch the printer and display the pictures as a slide show on your flatscreen (practically all of them have a VGA port.) Saves paper.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,376,758.587415 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/29/forget-treating-your-diabetes-use-your-insulin-syringe-as-a-logic-probe/ | Forget Treating Your Diabetes – Use Your Insulin Syringe As A Logic Probe | Mike Nathan | [
"Medical Hacks",
"News",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"logic probe",
"syringe"
] | Hackaday reader [JumperOne] was in need of a logic probe that he could use to reliably test some tiny .5mm pitch IC pins. The probe that came with his oscilloscope was a bit too big and not near sharp enough to do the job, but
he figured that a syringe might do the trick nicely.
He drilled a small hole near the business end of the syringe, through which he fed a piece of stripped twisted pair cabling. [JumperOne] then soldered a pair of pins to a small piece of coaxial cable, attaching the opposite end to the twisted pair already in the syringe. After carefully coiling the thin cable around the needle, he secured the coaxial cable and its pins in place with a bit of hot glue.
[JumperOne] says that his makeshift logic probe works very well and the sharp needle would easily pierce through any oxidation or solder mask that stands in its way. One extra benefit of using a syringe as a probe is that they come complete with caps which help protect both ends of the delicate tool. | 35 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "760515",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2012-08-29T11:11:42",
"content": "Here’s to sharp probes. I hate those blunt safety prods that cause shorts instead. I use piano wire ground to a point.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,376,758.715247 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/28/wide-word-clock-takes-a-modular-approach/ | Wide Word-clock Takes A Modular Approach | Mike Szczys | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"ATmega168",
"ds1307",
"MAX7219",
"word clock"
] | [Ishan Karve] took on the challenge of
building his own word clock
. This is a timepiece that displays the current time in the same syntax you would use if someone asked you what time it was. You’ll find a lot of these projects around, with one of our favorites
using etched copper clad as a bezel
. But [Ishan] departed for the ordinary by building a clock that is rectangular rather than square. To do so he uses a 16×8 LED matrix that is made up of small modules.
He designed a board that holds a 4×4 LED matrix and includes pin headers on each edge. This way he can arrange these 16-pixel blocks into arrays to make a larger grid. For the clock he used eight boards. These are driven by two MAX7219 chips, with an ATmega168 as the main controller and a DS1307 to keep time. Each LED is isolated by a thick layer of acrylic which as one hole for each pixel. This prevents light from bleeding over into letters that should not be illuminated. Check out the result in the clip after the break.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAORycrTEL0 | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "759774",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2012-08-28T23:03:14",
"content": "I saw word clock and thought he was building a new word clockhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_clock",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "759846",
"author... | 1,760,376,758.638595 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/28/motorizing-this-trycicle/ | Motorizing This Trycicle | Mike Szczys | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"batteries",
"bicycle",
"electric",
"tricycle",
"trike"
] | [Kaj] wanted to help out an aging family member by
building them an electric tricycle
during international Hack Day back on August 11th. He mixed in some reused parts with some new ones and ended up with bike that lets the rider troll other cyclists. Apparently when serious riders see an older man on a trike gaining on them they pedal like mad to make sure they don’t suffer the embarrassment of being passed. But there’s enough power and range to overtake the strongest of non-powered competitors.
Many of the parts came from a non-functional electric bike sold on Craig’s List. [Kaj] reports that the bike was trashed, but the motor system was mostly salvageable. He replace the batteries and charger and hooked up the motor to the rear axle. The initial install placed everything but the motor in the basket behind the rider. The weight and placement made the thing unstable when cornering. The solution was to house the batteries in a tool box and strap it below the basket. The lower center of gravity makes sure the trike is easy to handle, and now there’s still room in the basket for your groceries.
This would make a perfect platform for
some road messages printed in water
. | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "759649",
"author": "Perry Harrington",
"timestamp": "2012-08-28T21:30:30",
"content": "It’s not powered by the rear axle, it has a hub motor in the front wheel.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "762239",
"author": "Kim",... | 1,760,376,758.821685 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/28/vitamin-c-used-to-detect-the-presence-of-vanillin/ | Vitamin C Used To Detect The Presence Of Vanillin | Mike Szczys | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"ascorbic",
"ascorbic acid",
"crystal",
"green"
] | [Markus Bindhammer] recently made a discovery while conduction chemistry experiments in his home lab.
Ascorbic acid can be used to detect the presence of Vanillin
. The reaction starts as a color change, from a clear liquid to a dark green. When he continued to heat the mixture he ended up with the surface crystallization seen above.
Vanillin is an organic compound which you will commonly find in vanilla extract, with the synthetic variety being used in imitation extract. Ascorbic acid is a type of vitamin C. When [Markus] first observed the color change he though it could be due to metallic contamination, but running the experiment again without the use of metal tools or probes, produced the same result.
You can see in the clip after the break that it doesn’t take long to turn green. The vanillin must be heated to 130 degrees C before adding the ascorbic acid or the color change will not occur. He believes this can be a reliable way to detect the presence of Vanillin in a substance. | 36 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "759454",
"author": "macw",
"timestamp": "2012-08-28T20:06:39",
"content": "This doesn’t distinguish between synthetic and natural vanillin, right? So not a useful method for identifying real vs. fake vanilla extract. Cool anyway though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,758.893801 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/28/inebriator-servers-up-all-the-cocktails/ | Inebriator Servers Up All The Cocktails | Mike Szczys | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"bartender",
"robot"
] | The robotic bartender, lovingly named the Inebriator, is a work of mastery. We think you’ll be surprised by
the simplicity and grace of its beverage dispensing system
.
The most obvious part is the lineup of nine liquor bottles across the top with LED backlight for style. Each has a valve on it that is meant to be pressed on by the rim of a glass in order to dispense its payload. To dose the glass with alcohol the Inebriator drives a trolley along one axis beneath the line of bottles. When in position it has an actuator arm the rises up and depresses the bottle’s valve mechanism. Once all the liquor is in the glass it moves to the left side to be topped off with mixers. These are stored in bottles in a cooler under the table. They are pressurized with nitrogen, and an electronically actuated value lets the liquid flow. Drinks are selected on a character display, and there’s a weight sensor in the trolley to ensure that a drink isn’t mixed without a vessel to receive it.
You don’t want to miss seeing this in action after the break.
[via
Reddit
] | 39 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "759329",
"author": "icanhazadd",
"timestamp": "2012-08-28T19:08:03",
"content": "Nice! It would be even better if it actually stirred the drink though… if you like your drinks shaken though, perhaps an ultrasonic transducer in the trolley?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,376,758.963791 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/28/bluetooth-control-in-a-power-strip/ | Bluetooth Control In A Power Strip | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"ATmega168",
"bluetooth",
"mains",
"power strip",
"relay"
] | [Mansour] had a ceramic space heater mounted near the ceiling of his room. Since heat rises this is not the best design. He upgraded to an infrared heater which works a lot better, but lacks the timer function he used on the old unit. His solution wasn’t just to add a timer. He ended up
building a Bluetooth module into a power strip
in order to control the device wirelessly. He ends up losing all but two outlets on the strip, but everything fits inside the original case so we think it’s a reasonable trade-off.
He uses relays on both the live and neutral wires to switch the two outlets. These are driven via MOSFETs to protect the ATmega168 which controls the board. The microcontroller and Bluetooth module both need a regulated DC power source, so he included a transformer and regulator in the mix. After the break you can see him demonstrating the system using two lamps. There’s even a terminal interface which lets you select different control commands by sending the appropriate character. This interface makes script a breeze.
At least this power strip doesn’t
spy on you
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcymzCllrcs | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "759273",
"author": "AndroidCat",
"timestamp": "2012-08-28T18:42:12",
"content": "One thing that I’ve wanted that no one seems to make is a power bar that plugs into a USB port, and when the computer turns off, it would turn off all the wall-warts and speaker power that aren’t needed... | 1,760,376,758.770581 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/28/turning-on-pc-speakers-whenever-there-is-music-playing/ | Turning On PC Speakers Whenever There Is Music Playing | Brian Benchoff | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"attiny13",
"Auto-on",
"speaker"
] | If you’re like a lot of people, most of the time your computer speakers are on without actually playing any music. This wastes a bit of power, and [Bogdan] thought he could create a circuit to cut down on that wasted electricity. The result is
a very tiny auto-on circuit
able fit inside a pair of speakers.
The circuit is built around the ATtiny13, very nearly the smallest microcontroller available with an on-board ADC. When music is played on the computer, the ATtiny senses a bit of voltage in the audio line and switches a relay to power the speaker.
Of course, there is always the problem of music with a high dynamic range; if the sound played from the computer has too low of a volume, the ATtiny might turn the speakers off even if music is playing. [Bogdan] solved this problem by adding a timer to his code; if nothing is detected by the ADC for three minutes, the speakers turn off. | 44 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "759069",
"author": "tulcod",
"timestamp": "2012-08-28T17:22:10",
"content": "This feature is integrated in many modern audio chipsets, like my Intel HDA laptop chipset.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "759090",
"author"... | 1,760,376,759.045909 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/28/robo-doc-reads-childrens-pulses-without-scaring-them/ | Robo Doc Reads Children’s Pulses Without Scaring Them | Brian Benchoff | [
"Medical Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"medical",
"pediatric",
"pulse oximeter"
] | [Markus] recently took his 14-month-old daughter to the pediatrician for a routine checkup. During the examination, the doctor needed to measure her pulse and quickly clamped an infrared heart rate monitor onto her finger. Between the strange device clamped to her finger and incessant beeping of machines, [Markus]’ daughter got scared and started to cry. [Markus] thought these medical devices were far too scary for an infant, so
he designed a funny robot to read an infant’s heart rate
.
[Markus] liked the idea
the Tengu
, a robot with a LED matrix for facial expressions, and used it as inspiration for the interface and personality of his RoboDoc. To read a child’s pulse rate, [Markus] used a photoplethysmography sensor; basically an IR LED and receiver that reflects light off a finger bone and records the number of heartbeats per minute.
The build is tied together with a speaker allowing the RoboDoc to give the patient instructions, and a servo to turn the head towards the real, human doctor and display the recorded heart rate.
We think the RoboDoc would be far less disconcerting for an infant that a huge assortment of beeping medical devices, and we can’t wait to see [Markus]’ next version of non-scary doctor’s tools. | 25 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "758937",
"author": "Kaaaaaang",
"timestamp": "2012-08-28T16:17:12",
"content": "It looks far more scarier than a regular hearth beat monitor.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "759063",
"author": "Aaron",
"timesta... | 1,760,376,759.110757 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/28/soft-robots-given-veins-the-let-them-change-their-stripes/ | Soft Robots Given Veins The Let Them Change Their Stripes | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"color",
"dye",
"silicone",
"soft robotics"
] | If it were alive this robot would be classified as an invertebrate. It lacks a backbone and interestingly enough, all other bones are missing as well. The Harvard researchers that developed it call it a soft robot. It’s made out of silicone and uses pathways built into the substance to move. By
adding pressurized air to these pathways the appendages flex
relative to each other. In fact, after the break you can see a video of a starfish-shaped soft robot picking up an egg.
Now they’ve gone one step further. By adding another layer to the top, or even embedding it in the body,
the robot gains the ability to change color
. Above you can see a soft robot that started without any color (other than the translucent white of the silicone) and is now being changed to red. As the dye is injected it is propagating from the right side to the left. The team believes this could be useful in a swarm robotics situation. If you have a slew of these things searching for something in the dark they could pump glowing dye through their skin when they’ve found it. The demo can be seen after the jump.
Picking up an egg
Changing color
[Thanks Bill] | 21 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "758893",
"author": "Hack Man",
"timestamp": "2012-08-28T15:59:55",
"content": "If it were a sex toy, this robot would be classified as awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "759351",
"author": "L",
"timestamp... | 1,760,376,759.178241 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/28/learning-the-ins-and-outs-of-usb-with-a-simple-dev-board/ | Learning The Ins And Outs Of USB With A Simple Dev Board | Brian Benchoff | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"attiny2313",
"usb"
] | We can’t count the number of projects we’ve seen on Hackaday with a USB port. Unfortunately, most of these builds – from RepRap controllers to wireless data loggers – don’t use the full capabilities offered to them with USB. [Ben] came up with
a very cool USB breakout board
that allows you to explore the USB protocol with just a single inexpensive ATtiny.
Instead of relying on an FTDI chip or otherwise sending serial data down a USB pipe, [Ben]’s project is meant to be the hardware compliment to
his book on programming USB devices
. His hardware board is exceedingly simple, just an ATtiny 2313, a USB port, and a handful of other components, but allows [Ben] to receive data on eight pins on a breadboard and send them over USB to a computer.
[Ben] had sent in his
USB figure eight controller
, a board that displays the numbers 0 through 9 according to what data is received via USB, a while ago. It’s a truly useless build aside from learning how USB works, but an excellent tool if you’d like to program your own USB device. | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "758559",
"author": "egasimus",
"timestamp": "2012-08-28T13:49:29",
"content": "What’s the regulator? It’s listed as TO-220, which is just the package.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "758580",
"author": "WA",
"t... | 1,760,376,759.249992 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/28/turn-your-old-bluetooth-headphones-into-a-diy-car-audio-receiver/ | Turn Your Old Bluetooth Headphones Into A DIY Car Audio Receiver | Mike Nathan | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"Bluetooth A2DP",
"car",
"head unit",
"mobile phone"
] | [Tim] drives a 1995 Mitsubishi TS Magna, which is equipped with a less than stellar accessory package he lovingly calls a “poverty pack”. He outfitted his ride with an aftermarket head unit that can support the Bluetooth A2DP profile, provided he buys the ridiculously overpriced kit sold by Pioneer.
Reluctant to shell out more money on an audio kit
than his car is worth, he whipped up his own Bluetooth kit for far less than Pioneer’s asking price.
He had a set of Nokia Bluetooth headphones that he was willing to part with, so he disassembled them to see how he might interface with his car stereo. Connecting the headset to his head unit was a relatively easy task, but he had to work a bit harder to get his Bluetooth receiver powered properly.
After both undervolting and then nearly cooking his wireless audio rig, [Tim] managed to get things operating to his liking. He says that the audio is a touch quieter than he would like at the moment, so he will likely be revising his design in the near future. For now however, he can stream tunes from his phone while he cruises around town. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "758199",
"author": "Fallingwater",
"timestamp": "2012-08-28T11:07:42",
"content": "I saw an N900 and got all happy, then saw in the article that he just sold it :cAnyone know what media player it’s running? I’m looking for something good for my own recently-acquired N900…",
"par... | 1,760,376,759.375462 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/27/bga-soldering-with-a-paint-stripper-and-stopwatch/ | BGA Soldering With A Paint Stripper And Stopwatch | Mike Szczys | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"bga",
"heat gun",
"pcb",
"soldering"
] | Having just received a shiny set of PCBs from the fab-house [Devbisme] needed a way to solder the main chip in place. It has a Ball-Grid Array footprint which is notoriously difficult to populate in a home lab. But he makes it look pretty easy and
decided to share a video tutorial of the process
.
The main tool he used is the paint stripper (heat gun) seen above. Since he didn’t have his own fancy reflow oven he made things work with the gun as his heat source. First he applies a generous layer of liquid solder flux to the BGA footprint on the board. Next he melts some solder onto the tip of his iron and uses it to tin all of the board’s BGA pads. Then it’s time for the critical step of positioning the chip. He uses vacuum tweezers to set it in place, and traditional tweezers to fine-tune its position. From here he heats with the paint stripper for two minutes, starting far above the board and slowly moving closer, with the reverse at the end of the soldering process. Once cool the board is cleaned with distilled water and blown dry with compressed air. After a visual inspection he finishes the application with a 30 minute stay in a 300 degree oven. We’ve included the video after the break for your convenience.
We’ve seen a similar technique used for
replacing a chip on an already populated board
. | 22 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "757539",
"author": "xfdrak",
"timestamp": "2012-08-27T23:55:49",
"content": "Had to use a similar technique to repair my PS3 after it overheated and the heatsink tension pulled the GPU fromt eh MB.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,376,759.319969 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/27/a-desktop-binary-clock/ | A Desktop Binary Clock | Mike Szczys | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"24F16KA102",
"binary",
"led",
"sleep",
"sleep mode"
] | This is
the desktop binary clock
which [Tim the Floating Wombat] recently finished building. He calls it the Obfuscating Chronoscope since it’s a bit more difficult to read than your traditional analog or digital timepieces. But the simple design looks neat and it’s a great way to learn about board layout and microcontroller code.
He started by solving a few questions about the display technique. He wanted to use as few LEDs as possible. He settled on just four, and to prevent unnecessary confusion, decided to make sure each type of display (seconds, minutes, hours) would have at least one LED on at a time. Hours are easy enough to display, but with just four bits how can minutes be shown? He uses a 5-minute resolution, always rounding up to the next division of five. This way the first bit will be illuminated on the hour.
A PIC 24F16KA102 microcontroller keeps time using its built-in RTC and a clock crystal. It puts itself into deep sleep mode after displaying the time. The black knob at the bottom is a push-button which resets the chip, waking it up just long enough show the time once again. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,376,759.705726 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/27/reverse-engineering-a-syma-107-toy-helicopter-ir-protocol/ | Reverse Engineering A Syma 107 Toy Helicopter IR Protocol | Mike Szczys | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"helicopter",
"ir",
"remote control",
"reverse engineering",
"S107",
"Syma"
] | Half the fun of buying toys for your kids is getting your hands on them when they no longer play with them. [Kerry Wong] seems to be in this boat. He bought a Syma S107G helicopter for his son. The flying
toy is IR controlled and he reverse engineered the protocol
it uses. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this type of thing with the toy. In fact, we already know
the protocol has been sniffed
and there is even
a jammer project
floating around out there. But we took a good look at this because of what you can learn from [Kerry’s] process.
He starts by connecting an IR photo diode to his oscilloscope. This gave him the timing between commands and allowed him to verify that the signals are encoded in a 38 kHz carrier signal. He then switched over to an IR module designed to demodulate this frequency. From there he captures and graphs all of the possible control configuration, establishing a timing and command set for the device. He finishes it off by building a replacement controller based on an Arduino. You can see a video of that hardware after the break. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "757351",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2012-08-27T21:29:43",
"content": "Well now he has the codes the next step is to turn it into a computer controlled autonomous drone (with or without a taser.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,376,759.607206 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/27/making-images-and-videos-using-a-diy-fluoroscopic-x-ray/ | Making Images And Videos Using A Diy Fluoroscopic X-ray | Mike Szczys | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"fluoroscopic",
"fluoroscopiy",
"fluoroscopy",
"video"
] | [Jozef] has been playing around with X-rays. Specifically, he’s been
using his own setup to make fluoroscopic images
, a type of x-ray photography that allows for video images to be made. If you’ve ever seen those x-ray movies of someone swallowing, that’s fluoroscopy (we’re fans of the other oddities like
this video of a skeleton playing the trumpet
).
The image above is [Jozef’s] own hand. He exposed it for about one second, filming the event from the opposite side of a Curix Ortho Regular Screen. The screen fluoresces when hit by the particles from an x-ray tube he picked up on eBay. This particular event dosed his hand with about 10 rads. We have no clue as to what levels are safe (and a quick search didn’t enlighten us) so talk amongst yourselves in the comments section.
Of course [Jozef] didn’t stop with still images, he put a turntable between the tube and the screen and took
a bunch of x-ray videos of revolving electronics
. You’ll find the video embedded after the break. | 85 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "757196",
"author": "Tinkering Engineer",
"timestamp": "2012-08-27T20:16:02",
"content": "People used to use rem for dosage. To convert from rad to rem, you multiplied by a factor that took into account the ionizing potential of the radiation (gamma, beta, alpha, neutron all have the... | 1,760,376,759.824423 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/27/build-your-own-forge-inside-a-gallon-paint-can/ | Build Your Own Forge Inside A Gallon Paint Can | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"blacksmith",
"forge",
"Insulwool",
"paint can",
"Satanite Refractory Cement"
] | If you’d like to try your hand with the art of Blacksmithing but don’t want to go all-in on your first project this may be for you. It’s
a forge which you can build for under $100
. [Mike O’s] creation has some great features, like the option of using the forge as a pass through, and he finds it’s possible to heat metal up to 4″ wide.
He bought an empty paint can at the home store (we guess you don’t want fumes from any paint residue). The business end of the forge is actually the bottom of the paint can. He cut a small opening, then lined the inside of the can with Insulwool, a fabric used as heat shielding. From there the inside was lined with several layers of Satanite Refractory Cement. The same applications were made to the paint can’s original lid, which serves as the back of the forge. This way it can be removed for that pass-through we mentioned earlier.
A propane torch brings the heat for this project. [Mike] mentions that you’re going to want to do the first few firings outside as the cement really stinks until it’s been through a few heating cycles. This creation should get him started but we bet he’ll upgrade to something
like this coal forge
before long.
[via
Reddit
] | 14 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "757114",
"author": "Leithoa",
"timestamp": "2012-08-27T19:50:06",
"content": "You can spend way less than a hundred bucks if your willing to use charcoal(real stuff, not briquettes) or build your own propane burner. The savings come from mixing our own refractory out of bentonite an... | 1,760,376,759.660143 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/27/control-your-house-by-moving-your-arms-like-youre-directing-traffic/ | Control Your House By Moving Your Arms Like You’re Directing Traffic | Mike Szczys | [
"Kinect hacks"
] | [
"3d camera",
"home automation",
"human remote",
"laser",
"laser pointer",
"remote"
] | This home automation project lets you
flap your arms to turn things on and off
. [Toon] and [Jiang] have been working on the concept as part of their Master’s thesis at University. It uses a 3D camera with some custom software to pick up your gestures. What we really like is the laser pointer which provides feedback. You can see a red dot on the wall which followers where ever he points. Each controllable device has a special area to which the dot will snap when the user is pointing close to it. By raising his other arm the selected object can be turned on or off.
Take a look at the two videos after the break to get a good overview of the concept. We’d love to see
some type of laser projector
used instead of just a single dot. This way you could have a pop-up menu system. Imagine getting a virtual remote control on the wall for skipping to the next audio track, adjusting the volume, or changing the TV channel. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "757255",
"author": "jamen lang",
"timestamp": "2012-08-27T20:42:36",
"content": "I was wondering why kinect was in front of the user, seems like it could get better depth results from a side view.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": ... | 1,760,376,759.87333 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/27/the-taserdrone-a-shocking-mod-for-the-ar-drone/ | The ShockerDrone; A Shocking Mod For The AR Drone | Caleb Kraft | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"ar drone",
"drone",
"quacopter"
] | You’ve all seen taser like devices built from disposable cameras. We have seen them
mounted to rubber gloves
,
finger tips
, even
potato gun ammo
! We had not yet seen them on a quadcopter. This was quickly remedied once we had one to play with. Meet the
shockerDrone,
a Parrot AR Drone with built in shocker attachment.
To add the shocker attachment, we had to reduce weight as much as possible. To do this, all stickers and extra material was removed from the “indoor” hull of the AR Drone. We chose the indoor version because it has this night light frame that extends out past the blades to protect them. This was perfect for allowing it to bump into people.
We then made two tracks with aluminum tape around the entire hull. These were connected with wire directly to the capacitor in a disposable camera. Another weight reduction was to remove all extraneous pieces of the camera. Not only did this make it lighter, but it allowed the entire circuit to be hidden inside the hull. Only a little bit of carving was necessary to make enough space.
As you can see in the video, it does supply a shock, but not a strong enough one to knock you down. Our brave subject [Jared] got hit a few times and seemed to survive the ordeal. Then again, he’s an electrician and has probably had worse at his day job. I accidentally cradled it in my arm thinking it was discharged and ended up with a full and fairly prolonged discharge that broke the skin. You can see a picture of that down below.
I had an idea that a fun game would be “grab the dollar bill off of the shockerDrone”, but the AR Drone
isn’t quite as nimble as some other devices
we’ve seen and people were able to just snatch the dollar bill without much chance of being shocked. | 42 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "756815",
"author": "reverbtest42",
"timestamp": "2012-08-27T17:30:31",
"content": "So…is this turning into “Can we weaponize it?”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "972648",
"author": "Sean Austin",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,376,759.961866 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/27/theres-trouble-brewin-on-the-ol-kickstarter-site/ | There’s Trouble Brewin’ On The ‘ol Kickstarter Site | Brian Benchoff | [
"Crowd Funding"
] | [
"ambiolight",
"Crowd Funding"
] | This Kickstarter campaign
, the AmbioLight, brings RGB LED strips to the masses. The only problem is that some of the backers discovered
this RGB LED strip is already on the market
. Internet denizens are now frothing at the mouth, complaining the designers of the AmbioLight, “haven’t designed anything,” and are, “just reselling parts which [AmbioLight] put together at a higher cost than other products on the market.”
A few backers of the AmbioLight have found what they think to be the original product, an RGB LED strip produced by
ELCO Lighting
. Comparing the picture of the ‘ballast’ on the AmbioLight Kickstarter to the
ELCO controller
raises even more suspicions about how involved the AmbioLight team was involved in the design of their product.
Even if the AmbioLight is simply a repackaging of an already existing product, that doesn’t make it against the rules of Kickstarter. I’ve even
contributed to Kickstarter campaigns
just to get a difficult-to-source component. Still, given the vitriol of the AmbioLight’s comments page, Kickstarter contributors don’t seem to appreciate taking an already available product and reselling it as your own.
What say you, Hackaday reader? Is it right for the AmbioLight team to do this?
EDIT: Kickstarter suspended the funding of AmbioLight a few hours after this was posted. | 111 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "756602",
"author": "steve",
"timestamp": "2012-08-27T16:21:43",
"content": "Why would anybody be so stupid to think RGB LED stripes are an innovation? I don’t quite get the point… Isn’t it obvious that this is existing stuff? I guess all they did was to program a controller, right?"... | 1,760,376,760.102196 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/27/measuring-the-speed-of-sound-with-science-and-statistics/ | Measuring The Speed Of Sound With Science And Statistics | Brian Benchoff | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"science",
"speed of sound",
"statistics"
] | Despite what you may have heard elsewhere, science isn’t just reading [Neil deGrasse Tyson]’s Twitter account or an epistemology predicated on the non-existence of god. No, science requires much more work watching
Cosmos,
as evidenced by [Ast]’s adventures in analyzing data to
measure the speed of sound with a microcontroller
.
After [Ast]
built a time to digital converter
– basically an oversized stopwatch with microsecond resolution – he needed a project to show off what his TDC could do. The speed of sound seemed like a reasonable thing to measure, so [Ast] connected a pair of microphones and amplifiers to his gigantic stopwatch. After separating the microphones by a measured distance; [Ast] clapped his hands, recorded the time of flight for the sound between the two microphones, and repeated the test.
When the testing was finished,
[Ast] had a set of data that recorded the time it took the sound of a hand clap to travel between each microphone. A simple linear regression (with some unit conversions), showed the speed of sound to be 345 +/- 25 meters per second, a 7% margin of error.
A 7% margin of error isn’t great, so [Ast] decided to bring out
Numpy
to analyze the data. In the first analysis, each data point was treated with equal weight, meaning an outlier in the data will create huge errors. By calculating the standard deviation of each distance measurement the error is reduced and
the speed of sound becomes 331 +/- 14 m/s
.
This result was better, but there were still a few extraneous data points. [Ast]
chalked these up to echos and room vibrations
and after careful consideration, threw these data points out. The final result? 343 +/- 9 meters per second, or an error of 2.6%.
A lot of work for something you can just look up on Wikipedia? Yeah, but that’s not science, is it? | 22 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "756441",
"author": "Evan",
"timestamp": "2012-08-27T15:26:34",
"content": "I completely understand this urge to discover for yourself.I’ve replicated a lot of fundamental constant experiments on my own, and I love it. The speed of light in vacuum and Cavendish’s torsion balance expe... | 1,760,376,760.160449 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/27/turning-a-webcam-into-a-spectrometer/ | Turning A Webcam Into A Spectrometer | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"spectrometer",
"webcam"
] | If you want to find out what something is made out of, you’ll probably be using a spectrometer. These devices allow scientists to determine what something is made of by shining light through an object and recording what colors are absorbed. Professional spectrometers cost many thousands of dollars,
but you can build your own
using a simple USB web cam, an old DVD-R, and a VHS cassette case.
In this tutorial
of Public Labs’ DIY video spectrometer, [Jeffery] takes us through the process of building a spectrometer. After cutting a small bit of plastic from a DVD-R and mounting it on the lens of a web cam, [Jeff] puts the webcam in a VHS case and shines a light through a small slit. The result is a rainbow pattern captured by the webcam, and by putting different translucent materials in front of the light source, the spectrum slightly changes.
Of course a DIY spectrometer is nearly useless without a library of materials and their associated spectra. [Jeffery]
is working on this as well
with a wiki-style app called Spectral Workbench.
There’s a video tutorial for making your own DIY spectrometer available after the break. It seems like an easy build, if you can find the requisite VHS cassette case in your basement and/or attic.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA5BTD-aelo&w=470] | 22 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "756220",
"author": "Zee",
"timestamp": "2012-08-27T14:08:57",
"content": "I was reading in make magazine about a service that allows you to upload your spectral image and get a result but I can’t seem to find the magazine right now. Does anybody know?",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,376,760.275046 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/27/making-a-spray-booth-from-an-old-dishwasher/ | Making A Spray Booth From An Old Dishwasher | Brian Benchoff | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"dishwasher",
"spray booth"
] | For several years, [Randy]’s spray paint booth was a simple cardboard box. Sure, it kept the overspray contained to a small area, but there was a lot of room for improvement. Luckily, after replacing his dishwasher he had
the makings of an excellent spray paint booth
that can be put together in a few hours.
The build began by tearing apart the old dishwasher and getting rid of just about everything; the door, plumbing, and electrical were all discarded leaving [Randy] with a plastic husk. After installing a small fluorescent light, plugging the drain hole, and making a simple lazy Suzan, [Randy] had a proper spray booth on his hands.
[Randy] opted not to put in a ventilation system; he was, after all, working with non-toxic vapors. If you’re planning on gutting a dishwasher for use with some nasty chemicals, it might be a good idea to use the drain hole as a ventilation port. | 11 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "756163",
"author": "Niek Blankers",
"timestamp": "2012-08-27T13:42:39",
"content": "I had to google “Lazy Susan” to understand what it was. For my fellow foreigners:A lazy susan is one of those rotating trays, mostly used for moving food on top of a table.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,376,760.207084 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/27/becoming-gallagher-in-your-mind/ | Becoming Gallagher In Your Mind | Brian Benchoff | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"eeg",
"Gallagher",
"Star Wars Force Trainer",
"watermelon"
] | The folks at the Louisville hackerspace LVL1 created the handiest and the dandiest kitchen tool you’ve ever seen. It’s not a slicer, it’s not a dicer, or a chopper or a hopper; it’s…
a Star Wars Force Trainer that blows up watermelons
.
The project is called Mind Over Melon and was created by [Chris] and [Brad] at LVL1 for the
CONNECT at Bernheim festival
this past weekend. The idea behind the build is allowing people to explode a watermelon with their mind using a Star Wars Force Trainer EEG toy.
The build features the Force Trainer attached to an XBee module, wirelessly connected to the ground zero of watermelon destruction. When the operator of the device concentrates very hard, a series of LEDs light up and a solenoid dumps a shot of compressed CO2 into a watermelon.
[Brad] tells us instructions to build your own mental Sledge-O-Matic will be available on the LVL1 wiki shortly, but until then enjoy
this video of the Mind Over Melon
being featured on WHAS11 news. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,376,760.319103 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/27/multicolor-print-head-allows-reprap-to-print-rainbows/ | Multicolor Print Head Allows RepRap To Print Rainbows | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"multicolor",
"reprap"
] | Multicolor 3D printers have been around for a while, but most of these machines – like the Makerbot Replicator – suffer from alignment problems and the inability to mix colors on the fly. [RichRap] came up with an interesting solution to this problem by having
three filament extruders feed into a single hot end
, allowing him to change and mix colors on the fly.
To print in multiple colors, [RichRap] developed a three-extruder x carriage that sends colored filament to a single hot end. Unlike the Makerbot Replicator, [Rich]’s extruder can mix and blend different colors into each layer of a print.
The electronics portion of the build, [RichRap] controlled the X, Y, and Z axes of his printer with a RAMPS board, but used a slightly modified Sanguinololu board for the extruder motors. A single motor driver for the extruders is connected to a trio of toggle switches, allowing [RichRap] to switch between filaments on the fly.
[Rich] has a very cool build on his hands, but it’s far from a perfect solution. Right now, any one of the three colors can be used to print, but printing with two or three colors simultaneously requires a change in the firmware. We expect someone to solve this problem in the near future, allowing the holy grail of a CMYK print head to come to fruition.
You can see a demo video of [RichRap]’s tri-color print head after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkkbjpHVNZQ&w=470] | 29 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "755903",
"author": "Agent24",
"timestamp": "2012-08-27T11:20:17",
"content": "That is awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "758049",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2012-08-28T08:40:40",
"content": ... | 1,760,376,760.386969 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/26/3d-printed-guns-laws-and-regulations-and-philosophical-discussions-on-the-nature-of-printed-objects/ | 3D Printed Guns, Laws And Regulations, And Philosophical Discussions On The Nature Of Printed Objects | Brian Benchoff | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"AR-15",
"gun",
"wikiwep"
] | For as long as they’ve been banded about, 3D printers were regarded as the path to a new economy, a method of distributed manufacturing, and a revolution for the current consumer culture. With every revolution, a few people need to get angry and the guys at Defense Distributed are doing their part to make that happen. They’re designing a handgun
able to be printed on a hobbyist-level 3D printer
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a 3D printable weapon;
this 3D printed AR-15 lower receiver
is the only part of an AR-15 that contains the ID markings and serial number. Legally, the AR lower
is
the gun, and requires a background check to purchase (with the footnote that this varies from state to state and country to country – long story short, the BATFE probably isn’t happy about a 3D printed AR lower). The one drawback of a 3D printed AR-15 lower is that every other part of the gun must be purchased elsewhere. This is where Defense Distributed comes in: they propose designing a gun that is 100% printable on a hobbist-level 3D printer such as a RepRap or Makerbot.
Right now, Defense Distributed is looking for funding to produce two gun designs. The first design,
WikiWep A
will serve as a research build, allowing Defense Distributed to answer a few questions on what can be built with a RepRap.
WikiWep B
will have moving parts for the firing action and very nearly all the parts will be printable on a RepRap or Makerbot.
In the video Defense Distributed put up for their now cancelled IndieGoGo campaign (available after the break), the guys talk about the distribution of a CAD file of completely 3D printable weapon being a threshold of a new economy where laws and regulations cease to apply. We’re not sure we agree with that statement; after all, anyone with some metal forming tools can build
an excellent weapon to acquire another weapon
, but we’re interested in seeing what governments and regulators will make of Defense Distributed’s project.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ6Q3BfbVBU&w=470] | 237 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "755248",
"author": "clvrmnky",
"timestamp": "2012-08-26T20:20:27",
"content": "s/banded/bandied/“For as long as the notion of 3D printing has been bandied about…”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "759874",
"author": "Le ... | 1,760,376,760.877371 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/26/visualizing-water-droplets-and-building-a-ct-scanner/ | Visualizing Water Droplets And Building A CT Scanner | Brian Benchoff | [
"Software Development",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"point cloud",
"Tomography"
] | Since his nerves were wracked by presenting his project to an absurdly large crowd at this year’s SIGGRAPH, [James] is finally ready to share
his method of mixing fluids via optical tomography
with a much larger audience: the readership of Hackaday.
[James]’ project focuses on the problem of modeling mixing liquids from a multi-camera setup. The hardware is fairly basic, just 16 consumer-level video cameras arranged in a semicircle around a glass beaker full of water.
When [James] injects a little dye into the water, the diffusing cloud is captured by a handful of Sony camcorders. The images from these camcorders are sent through an algorithm that selects one point in the cloud and performs a random walk to find every other point in the cloud of liquid dye.
The result of all this computation is a literal volumetric cloud, allowing [James] to render, slice, and cut the cloud of dye any way he chooses. You can see the videos produced from this very cool build after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV7qgAwGp4E&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV6vh_xM0hI&w=470] | 9 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "755151",
"author": "Hack Man",
"timestamp": "2012-08-26T18:15:59",
"content": "Or 3d print them.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "755160",
"author": "cknopp",
"timestamp": "2012-08-26T18:29:09",
"content": "This will ... | 1,760,376,760.592306 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/26/recreating-phillip-k-dick-in-android-form-and-losing-his-head/ | Recreating [Phillip K. Dick] In Android Form… And Losing His Head | Caleb Kraft | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"android",
"phillip k dick",
"robot"
] | Yes, that’s an
android of [Phillip K. Dick]
. While you don’t necessarily need to be familir with [
Phillip K. Dick
] to find this story amusing, we highly recommend that you take a few minutes to learn about him if you don’t recognize the name. [Phillip K. Dick], or [PKD] was a science fiction author and created many of the ideas and even base stereotypes for the science fiction movies you are probably very familiar with.
Most of that, however, isn’t completely relevant to the story here. Someone decided to build an android [Phillip K. Dick]. A move that generally results in expeditions
deep into the uncanny valley
and causes people to want to keep their distance. In this case, however, the fancy android head of [P.K.D] was left in an overhead compartment in an airplane for a short time by accident. During this short time, someone took it and it has not been seen since.
The story of the entire build and design process is actually quite intriguing.
Not only did they sculpt a likeness of [P.K.D.] and add some motion to it, they compiled a database of his essays and writings from which it will create answers that are at least tinted with his thoughts
. A method very similar to something he himself wrote about back in 1964. | 16 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "755109",
"author": "monopole",
"timestamp": "2012-08-26T17:15:28",
"content": "http://books.google.com/books/about/Do_Anything.html?id=ZcT2QwAACAAJThe robot head of comic book legend Jack Kirby lives on Warren Ellis’ desk! (Actually, it’s the stolen and repurposed head of the missin... | 1,760,376,760.445396 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/26/s-h-i-e-l-d-heli-carrier-brought-to-life/ | S.H.I.E.L.D. Heli Carrier Brought To Life | Caleb Kraft | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"avengers",
"multi rotor",
"quadrocopter",
"shield"
] | This fantastic work by [Native18] shows a quad copter reproduction of the Heli carrier used by the Avengers.
Following this thread
(
translated
), you can follow along his thought process as well as his build process as he proceeds. The construction is mainly paper and lightweight foam, but it still manages to float and even take off from the water.
We’ve seen other aircraft carrier designs before, but not many this well polished, and none that took off from water.
[via
technabob
]
[youtube =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QFHFXcIMuA&feature=player_embedded] | 34 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "754962",
"author": "addidis",
"timestamp": "2012-08-26T14:08:30",
"content": "Impressive.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "754969",
"author": "steve",
"timestamp": "2012-08-26T14:15:29",
"content": "Now you just need ... | 1,760,376,760.959418 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/24/volt-meter-clock-also-displays-the-temperature/ | Volt Meter Clock Also Displays The Temperature | Brian Benchoff | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"ds1307",
"pic",
"real time clock",
"volt meter"
] | [IronJungle] got around to putting together every tinkerers favorite project: a clock with a strange way of displaying the time. For his clock, [Jungle]
took a trio of voltmeters
and turned them into a clock that displays the current hour, minute, and second on custom paper dials.
[IronJungle] connected a PIC 14M2 microcontroller to a DS1307 real time clock to keep track of the current time. As for display, [Jungle] took a trio of volt meters and wired them in to the PWM outputs on his PIC. With this, he was able to precisely control the position of the needle in the meter, and thus display the time.
In addition to displaying the time, [IronJungle] added a small temperature sensor to his build. By pressing a button below the seconds display, the clock is able to display the current temperature in Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin.
After the break you can check out a time-lapse video of [IronJungle]’s voltmeter clock going through the hours.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM1fZeeBiUU&w=470] | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "752661",
"author": "Dissy",
"timestamp": "2012-08-24T21:06:59",
"content": "I’d like to be the first to say here, that clock looks awesome! Job well done.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "753296",
"author": "jobgg",
"tim... | 1,760,376,761.054385 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/24/the-100-tri-copter/ | The $100 Tri-copter | Caleb Kraft | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"drone",
"tricopter"
] | We’ve seen lots of budget tri-copters,
but $100 seems like a heck of a deal to us
! Watching this video, you can see this home made tri-copter is incredibly agile and seems to handle quite well. Whats amazing is that [hallstudio] claims that it cost roughly $100. That price is really good compared to even the cheapest multi copters out there.
Much of the manufacturing cost associated with this kind of thing has been removed as the body is just cheap wood from the local hardware store. He even did an admittedly sloppy rig for his tail rotor, not that it looks like it has hurt his performance. One cool feature is the fact that you can fold the front arms backward, allowing for the tri-copter to be shoved into a bag for easy transportation.
You can find a complete parts list on his video, but it looks like maybe his cost doesn’t figure in the cost of the radio controller. There are no build instructions, but a quick google search leads us to the
rcexplorer tricopter
which seems to be the template he used. There are full build details there.
[via
Hackedgadgets
] | 26 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "751699",
"author": "addidis",
"timestamp": "2012-08-24T14:04:46",
"content": "Would love to see some one kitize something like this.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "751720",
"author": "William",
"timestamp": "2012-08-24T... | 1,760,376,761.440229 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/24/10bitworks-shows-us-how-to-light-up-a-synchronized-swarm-of-led-jellyfish/ | 10bitworks Shows Us How To Light Up A Synchronized Swarm Of LED Jellyfish | Mike Nathan | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"News",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"jeenode",
"led",
"Luminaria",
"t-shirt",
"wireless"
] | [Jeremy Zunker] from 10bitworks recently
wrote in to share a cool build the group put together for the Luminaria 2012 festival
which took place in March of this year. As you might have guessed, the fest is home to a wide array of light-themed projects, so the team at 10bitworks thought long and hard to come up with a design which would help them stand out from the other 79 featured artists.
At the core of their project is a t-shirt which features a deep-sea diver surrounded by swarm of jellyfish. Each of the jellyfish is backlit by an LED module, allowing the group to create intricate light patterns on the shirt.
10bitworks brought 8 shirts to the show, each fitted with a small control pack that contained a set of batteries and a Jeenode wireless board. A ninth Jeenode and a large antenna were used as the master control unit, sending signals to each of the t-shirts in order to synchronize the light display.
The final result turned out very nicely as you can see in the video below, where [Jeremy] walks through all of the project’s finer details.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raDpGZVuk5E&feature=player_embedded&w=470] | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "752732",
"author": "Kate",
"timestamp": "2012-08-24T21:49:23",
"content": "Nice",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "753113",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2012-08-25T03:47:15",
"content": "Looks great. I like how som... | 1,760,376,761.006914 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/23/extending-the-range-of-the-ar-drone-2-ways/ | Extending The Range Of The AR Drone, 2 Ways. | Caleb Kraft | [
"drone hacks",
"Toy Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"ar drone"
] | As I mentioned earlier, we’ve got an AR Drone to play with. One of the common mods that popped up on the internet were ways of extending the range on the AR Drone. It normally uses a local Wi-Fi connection to your phone or tablet for control and video signals. Many found this quite restrictive and have gone pretty far in extending that range.
The first and easiest was just to set up a higher power Wi-Fi Bridge where you’ll be flying. The Drone only has about 15db of wi-fi magic in it, so anything stronger than that is an improvement. There were too many variations on this to delve into the details, but as you see, there’s not much too it.
The second method is to completely replace the Wi-Fi control system with a nice R/C controller. This will greatly increase your range as well as give you extra channels for triggering different attachments (usually lights). I’ve seen two main methods used. One is called “MacGuyver mod”. This one is a
plug and play kit that doesn’t seem to have much info along with it
.
The other is called “MiruMod” and the creator
has shared all the information they can
. You can find a parts breakdown as well as schematics, wiring diagrams, instructions, and software. [Miru] uses an Arduino Pro Mini or an Arduino Nano as a go-between from the receiver to the serial port on the AR Drone. You can see in the wiring diagram below that it is a fairly simple install, and all [miru] asks for is that maybe you donate some beer money if you appreciate his mod. | 50 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "750476",
"author": "BadHaddy",
"timestamp": "2012-08-23T20:21:24",
"content": "My ford van is setup with a 75 foot collapsible mast for ham radio operations during emergencies (I’m in ARES). One of the radios at the top is a ubiqiti 1000mw access point on a 20db sector antenna. (B... | 1,760,376,761.206034 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/23/playing-with-dsp-and-building-a-guitar-pedal/ | Playing With DSP And Building A Guitar Pedal | Brian Benchoff | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"dsp",
"guitar pedal",
"pic32"
] | Building guitar pedals has come a long way from hooking up a few transistors and building a simple boost circuit. [Cloudscapes] has been working on
a Anti-nautilus auto glitch, auto repeat pedal
, and if you’re looking for something that sounds like a spaghetti western soundtrack skipping on a record player, we couldn’t think of anything better.
[Cloudscapes] was already familiar with 8-bit AVRs, but when doing real-time audio sampling, a more powerful microcontroller was in order. He turned to the MikroElektronika MINI-32 board for development purposes. This small board fits a PIC32 microcontroller into an easily breadboardable DIP-40 form factor, perfect for playing around with some very capable hardware.
For the DAC, [Cloudscapes] had some experience with the 16-bit PT8211, but finding a good 16-bit ADC in a convenient package was a bit of a challenge. He eventually settled on the 12-bit MCP3201 ADC, more than enough for a pedal that is
supposed
to sound lo-fi.
After [Cloudscapes] got a few boards made, he started on his DSP adventure. Unfortunately, the initial code used unsigned 16-bit words to represent each sample, meaning every time the loop repeated it would start at 0 and produce a short pop in the speaker. After a week of debugging, [Cloudscapes] realized signed integers are a much better data format for storing audio data and got rid of the problems plaguing his project.
Now [Cloudscapes] has a wonderful DSP dev board, perfect for making new and strange guitar effects. After the break you can listen to a demo of what the Anti-nautilus pedal actually does, and we’ve got to say it sounds great.
Thanks [Chris] for sending this one in.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdqwXGB0944&w=470] | 19 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "750447",
"author": "qwerty",
"timestamp": "2012-08-23T20:09:08",
"content": "lol… the test video made my cat meow!:)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "750475",
"author": "Le Samourai",
"timestamp": "2012-08-23T20:19:56",
... | 1,760,376,761.114805 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/23/hackaday-retro-edition-roundup/ | Hackaday Retro Edition Roundup | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"retro",
"retro edition"
] | In case you’ve forgotten about it, we still have
a retro edition
of Hackaday. It’s our simple, hand-coded HTML site featuring a few random hacks from Hackaday’s 8-year history. There’s also a
retro successes page
where our readers can log on with their old boxxen and claim their prize as a master of retrocomputing. Here’s a few retro successes that came in over the past month or so:
Our second OS/2 Warp submission comes from [Chris]. He got an
HP Omnibook 800CT running OS/2 Warp 4
to load up our retro site.
A few of you may be wondering what the upper bound of what we consider a retro computer is. [Witek] used a
Wyse thin client from the year 2000
to pull up our retro edition. These terrible computers used a Compact Flash card plugged directly into an IDE port to load up Windows CE. Yeah, it’s
technically
a SSD. [Witek] put the GRUB bootloader on one and loaded up our retro edition with Debian Squeeze. We have too many bad memories of these thin clients, and we’ve got to commend [Witek] for putting the effort into doing something useful with one.
[leadacid] is on a roll. He gave us our first OS/2 Warp submission and has since moved
onto an IBM RS/6000
. Previously, he got a
Macintosh 8100 and a Quadra 840AV
to pull up the retro site. Nice job.
Those are all the retro submissions for now, but if you have an old computer lying around, try pulling up our retro site and
send it in
. | 28 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "750203",
"author": "Zack",
"timestamp": "2012-08-23T18:14:15",
"content": "If you’d like it’s not difficult to plug this in with your existing wordpress",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "750206",
"author": "Zack",
... | 1,760,376,761.276744 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/23/sadly-you-cant-buy-this-hoverbike/ | Sadly, You Can’t Buy This Hoverbike | Brian Benchoff | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"Aerofex",
"hoverbike"
] | The LA Times posted a story about a company called Aerofex that
built a real-life hover bike
very reminiscent of the vehicles embedded in the redwoods of the forest moon of Endor.
The bike itself is a pair of ducted fans, with the pilot straddling the craft amidship. Aerofex claims the ducts on their hoverbike prevent the recirculating flow of air that causes dust or snow to completely obscure a helicopter pilot’s vision when landing.
From the Times’ article, Aerofex doesn’t have any plans to make this hoverbike commercially available and is instead meant to be a concept vehicle for future UAVs.
On the
Aerofex blog
, there’s a ton of videos showing off the capabilities of this bike. From what we can gather, it doesn’t seem like this hoverbike can climb higher than a few inches off the ground, so it’s of questionable utility when not flying around a dry lake bed.
Surprisingly, Aerofex says their bike doesn’t require any artificial stabilization or software; it’s controlled by the pilot leaning front to back and side to side. We’ll take that as an indication this hoverbike may be easy for someone to build in a garage, and we’ll be sure to post the first Aerofex hoverbike clone that shows up on our tip line.
You can check out a video of the hoverbike in action after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGw7qQlQWFM&w=470] | 32 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "750070",
"author": "Zee",
"timestamp": "2012-08-23T17:11:30",
"content": "It might work… for 10 minutes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "750077",
"author": "pablo",
"timestamp": "2012-08-23T17:17:01",
"content": "Thi... | 1,760,376,761.372909 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/25/how-do-squid-react-to-being-shocked-to-the-beat-of-cypris-hill/ | How Do Squid React To Being Shocked To The Beat Of Cypris Hill? | Caleb Kraft | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"cephalopod",
"squid"
] | Well, they probably get annoyed.
Cephalopods have a nifty trick where they can change color by altering the size and shape of chromataphors, or “colored cell thingy blobs”. Like most cells, these chromataphors react to electricity in different ways. Mainly, expanding and contracting.
The folks at Backyard Brains, a group that does neuroscience at home, have
decided to run an experiment where they pump the signal from Cypris Hill’s song Insane in the membrane right into the nerve on a fin of a squid
to see how the chromatophrs react. Not surprisingly, they pulse to the beat.
Just because it isn’t a surprise, doesn’t mean its not fun to watch. | 55 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "753983",
"author": "jimmythecow",
"timestamp": "2012-08-25T17:04:04",
"content": "I love this on sooo many levels.. the humor, the science, the fun hacks!! finally HAD your getting your pimp game back!its starting to look like the old HAD i knew and loved.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,376,761.648499 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/25/the-dark-pi-rises/ | The Dark Pi Rises | Caleb Kraft | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"drone"
] | Ever wonder how an aerospace engineer would build a telepresence rover? Well, if [algorythmic] can be used as our reference,
he’d cram a Raspberry Pi AND an Arduino into an RC truck frame
. The arduino is being used for motor control while the Raspberry pi is doing the communicating back and forth to the base. He’s using a ps3 controller as his interface and has slightly modified his PS3 eye for better night viewing.
Before you start shouting that using the raspberry pi AND the arduino is massive overkill, let us remind you that people don’t necessarily go buy/build all the parts for each project with a long-term goal in mind. He could have had both sitting there and realized that he didn’t need to add parts to either of them.
With the Raspberry Pi at the helm, this opens up all kinds of possibilities for adding features to make this an autonomous vehicle. Looking around his blog a little bit, it seems he’s done some visual recognition as well as voice control in the past. This could be interesting! | 22 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "753803",
"author": "piedottaste",
"timestamp": "2012-08-25T14:51:05",
"content": "Hi, I normally never comment here – I’m here for the interesting articles.I just thought it was worth chiming in to say I think it’s a bit of a shame that the hack-a-day comment community is such that ... | 1,760,376,761.712037 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/24/generating-truly-random-sequences/ | Generating Truly Random Sequences | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"chua circuit",
"rand",
"random",
"randomness"
] | Your brain can’t generate random numbers, and computers can’t either. Most of the ‘random’ numbers we come across in our lives are actually pseudorandom numbers; random enough for their purpose, but ordered enough to throw statistical analyses for a loop. [Giorgio] thought generating random sequences would make for an excellent project, so
he whipped up a random sequence generator
out of a few Opamps, resistors, and a handful of caps.
[Giorgio] used a
Chua Circuit
– a circuit that models nonlinear equations – to create a chaotic system. When pairs of points from these systems of equations are plotted on a graph, a fabulous and chaotic ‘double scroll’ pattern (seen above) can be found. After taking oscilloscope probes to different points on his Chua circuit, [Giorgio] watched chaos magically appear on his ‘oscope screen.
The double scroll pattern isn’t exactly random, but since the Z signal of his circuit chaotically varies between positive and negative, the only thing needed to create a random sequence of 1s and 0s is sending the Z signal through a comparator.
After calibrating and sampling his circuit [Giorgio] captured thousands of samples at a rate of 5 samples per second. From a cursory glance, it looks like [Giorgio]’s circuit is at least as good as flipping a coin, but proper tests for randomness require many more samples.
A very, very cool piece of work that is much, much more elegant than getting random bits from a Geiger counter. | 69 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "752664",
"author": "Murray",
"timestamp": "2012-08-24T21:08:29",
"content": "Personally I like a noisy zener, listening to the waterfall of electrons.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "752768",
"author": "fonz",
... | 1,760,376,762.107514 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/24/usb-business-card-packs-an-arm-processor/ | USB Business Card Packs An ARM Processor | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"arm",
"business card",
"usb"
] | Over on the Hackaday forums, [Brian] introduced himself by
showing off his new business card
. Given his expertise is creating unique circuit boards, we can’t imagine a better way to show off his skills than an ARM-powered business card.
[Brian] posted a more detailed write-up
on his blog
that covers his development process. He decided to use a 48-pin LPC1343 ARM Cortex M3 as a USB Mass Storage Class device. All the heavy lifting for instantiating a USB storage device is handled by the microcontroller, so all [Brian] had to do was wire up a Flash memory chip and access it over an SPI interface.
The finished business card functions just like a USB thumb drive with a whopping 1 Megabyte of storage. That’s not a lot of storage, but it has more than enough room for [Brian]’s resume, a link to his website, and the full source code for his card. | 25 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "752560",
"author": "limpkin",
"timestamp": "2012-08-24T20:26:02",
"content": "way overkill and also too expensive…I’m currently doing the same thing with an at90usb82 + usb connector on the pcb itselfalso, he didn’t put any tvs, so i wonder how long this card would last :)",
"pa... | 1,760,376,764.138156 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/24/should-we-make-games-for-fish/ | Should We Make Games For Fish? | Caleb Kraft | [
"Rants"
] | [
"fish",
"games",
"not seriously"
] | I have often sat, gazing at my aquarium, wondering what life is like for those critters I keep captive. Are they bored and yearning to be set free? Are they content with their gluttonous lifestyle and constant pampering?
This is a question that is often raised with animals of a higher order, like pachyderm in the zoo, or chimpanzee. Those are easier to personify and to debate, but those are also, not often in our homes.
I keep my aquariums overgrown with actual live plant life. I have a flourishing ecosystem of natural plant filtration and invertebrates that I truly enjoy watching as they pick at the debris and bustle throughout the day. I test my water regularly to make sure it is optimal for the health of all involved. But my fish, well, as I said, I wonder about them.
[youtube =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnBv76VQzNk ]
This interesting study really has nothing to do with gaming for enriching the lives of the fish
, but you can see that they’ve effectively made a game, where the fish tries to eat a projected dot. Some may argue that this is cruel, teasing the fish without actually rewarding its hunting instinct. Not only that, but striking the glass can actually harm the fish (you’ve probably seen larger fish with nasty wounds on their lips from this).
Lets say we reversed the “game” though. Many fish, especially in the type of aquarium I have, are shoaling fish. They are put at ease by greater numbers of their own. It has been proven that they live longer when stress is reduced, and these fish are easily stressed by being alone or in small groups. What if we were able to project a larger shoal of fish around them for their own mental comfort?
I don’t have an answer. I realize there are more important and pressing concerns that we should be tackling. I still wonder though, as I watch my fish. | 31 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "752478",
"author": "Easy Living",
"timestamp": "2012-08-24T19:48:38",
"content": "Congratulations are in order if these are your remaining problems. Any tips on your success in life? ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "752593",
... | 1,760,376,763.955704 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/24/uncovering-easter-eggs-in-old-mac-roms/ | Uncovering Easter Eggs In Old Mac ROMs | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"easter egg",
"easter eggs",
"macintosh",
"Macintosh SE",
"rom"
] | The picture you see above is taken from the ROM of a Macintosh SE made in the late 1980s. This black and white image remained buried inside old Macs until [Adam] and [Trammell] at NYC Resistor
reverse engineered these old Mac ROMs
and found a few really cool Easter eggs.
[Adam] and [Trammell]
have been dumping ROMs
from old computers for a while now. Their modus operandi is finding old 27C-series EPROMs on old computers, prying the out of their comfortable home, slapping them in a breadboard, and wiring up an Arduino clone to dump the data to a computer.
Recently, the guys found an old Mac SE lying on the side of a road in Brooklyn and brought it over to NYC Resistor. They had known about images hidden in the SE ROM, but the guys wanted to know how and where these pictures were stored. After carefully inspecting the binary file generated from dumping the ROM, [Adam] was able to recover three images hidden in every Macintosh SE.
The folks at Apple – especially in the heady days of the Apple II and 68k Macs – hid quite a few Easter eggs in the ROMs of their computers. For instance, the Apple IIgs has audio data stored in the ROM, and the Macintosh Classic hid an entire operating system – System 6.0.3 – in the ROM of the machine.
via
Make | 22 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "752148",
"author": "KG4MXV",
"timestamp": "2012-08-24T17:07:02",
"content": "Ahh the good old days,There is another easter egg that if you held down a certain key combo during startup it would scroll the names of all the programmers while playing the monty python theme and at the en... | 1,760,376,763.838826 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/24/hackerspace-grand-opening-tonight-in-portsmouth-nh/ | Hackerspace Grand Opening Tonight In Portsmouth NH | Caleb Kraft | [
"Hackerspaces"
] | [
"hackerspace",
"portsmouth"
] | The Port City hackerspace will be
opening its doors tonight at 7pm for their grand opening party
. Judging from the pictures on their site, they’ve actually had the space long enough to get the tools set up and even do a few projects. This should be a good way to jump start the membership though. Like most hackerspaces should, they are offering classes to people to educate them on the use of the tools and proper safety.
They have the usual full shop, but they also have a designated bike shop, where they will have several custom bikes on display. If you’re in the area, you should be sure to swing by and check it out. You are assured to at least get some delicious bar-b-que out of the deal. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "752146",
"author": "deadlyfoez",
"timestamp": "2012-08-24T17:06:32",
"content": "Damnit!! I live like 45 minutes away, but I just don’t have the gas to make it there :(I’d really love to go to this event. This would be SOOOO freaking cool. Looks like I’ve got 6 hours to come up with... | 1,760,376,763.729216 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/23/hacking-the-ar-drone-intro/ | Hacking The AR Drone: Intro | Caleb Kraft | [
"HackIt"
] | [
"ar drone",
"quadcopter"
] | Ever since we played with the original AR drone back at CES a few years ago, we’ve been keeping an eye on them. While we all agree there are better quadcopters out there, the price point for a ready-to-fly quadcopter of this size is really great with these.
When the
fake video from FPS Russia of the weaponized drone
made the rounds earlier this year, we were surprised at how people reacted. Anyone who has messed with quadcopters recognized it as fake right off the bat (not to mention the overly cliche fake russian character).
We won’t be adding a full fledged firearm to this. Mainly because it simply can’t lift the weight (There are ones that can, but we couldn’t justify the cost just for that). We do have some ideas though.
Lets go over the specs of the AR Drone 2.0 first.
Specs
The manufacturer is pretty good about sharing information. They have a decent breakdown of the specs as well as a full SDK available for writing apps for the AR drone.
*We’re assuming they mean 1Gigabyte of RAM there on the specs.
As you can see, it has decent specs for the $299 price tag. This is partially due to the fact that it uses wi-fi for control. A decent radio system would greatly increase the distance (and probably response), but would have added another $100 to the price tag.
First Impressions
This isn’t a full review of the AR Drone. I didn’t run it through any tough tests, nor compare it to similar sized and outfitted competitors. I just pulled it out of the box, flew it around a bit, and started thinking about how best to make it preposterously dangerous.
During this time, I found that the Wi-Fi control system works fairly well. There’s not really a discernible lag between motions on the iPhone and motions on the drone. The drone was fairly stable both indoors and out, though it really didn’t like ceiling fans.
I started taping things to it to see how it would respond. As you get too much weight on it, you start to see that the stabilization system twitches attempting to keep it level. This happens long before it physically can’t lift things. It shouldn’t be an issue though as I only noticed it while attempting to hover in place. Battery life is greatly reduced though with any additional weight. This is a pain in the butt because the stock battery only offers roughly 8 min of un-weighted flight on a 1.5 hour charge.
Modifications already done
There is already a strong community of modders out there for the AR drone. Here are some common mods that I found while researching. I’ve included a few links to examples, but there are many more to be found.
full radio conversion mod
(two main versions people seem to be following)
HD cameras
performance part replacement (bearings, lighter bodies, etc)
lights
. People add tons of lights, both for performance and show.
Dangerous fun (
bottle rockets mainly
, though I found
one estes rocket
and one mention of lasers.)
Modifications planned
I’ve got some ideas. They’re not all very safe sounding, but don’t worry, I’ll take precautions to make sure no one gets hurt. They’re also not very practical, but sound really fun.
Custom airsoft gun (multiple shots possible, c02 powered)
audio bug deployment (small transmitter that could be dropped by drone)
flame thrower
POV light bar (need a super light weight design)
laser for balloon popping (yes, indoors with proper eye protection).
LED sticky/throwie delivery
taser device (probably fry the drone when it hits something)
Let me know your ideas. Keep in mind that if I strip this thing down, I can really only carry 100-150 grams comfortably. Also keep in mind I don’t have the time or resources to carry out massive undertakings (sorry, no AI swarms, etc ) | 46 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "749969",
"author": "Joe",
"timestamp": "2012-08-23T16:22:51",
"content": "Maybe a spring loaded BB or pellet gun, and it could carry a reasonable amount of ammo for the weight.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "888260",
... | 1,760,376,764.22102 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/23/more-small-radio-modules-for-your-wireless-needs/ | More Small Radio Modules For Your Wireless Needs | Brian Benchoff | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"ISM band",
"radio",
"wireless"
] | In the never-ending pursuit of cheap wireless communication for your microcontroller projects, [kiu]
came up with a small board
that allows for serial communication via a 433MHz radio link.
[kiu]’s transceiver uses an
RFM12 wireless module
available online for just a few dollars. Alongside this module is an ATMega8 and a USB to serial FTDI chip. When [kiu] plugs this board into his computer, he’s able to run a terminal, connect to this board, and receive and transmit hex values at 115,200 bps from another one of these boards.
According to [kiu]’s BOM, 10 boards only cost him 180 Euros, or about $225 USD. Considering off-the-shelf solutions such as an XBee could easily cost twice as much, we’re thinking [kiu] did a very nice job here.
[kiu] put all the board files, schematics, and code
up on his GitHub
, ready for your perusal. A very cool build, and very useful for a high altitude balloon, rocket, or wireless sensor build. | 18 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "749881",
"author": "Gert",
"timestamp": "2012-08-23T15:26:38",
"content": "Pololu’s Wixel (in the USA) seems very similar and more capable (except perhaps wireless range?), and at $20 apiece… wins?http://www.pololu.com/catalog/category/91Then I looked closer, and apparently the cost... | 1,760,376,764.069871 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/23/programming-the-attiny10-with-an-arduino/ | Programming The ATtiny10 With An Arduino | Brian Benchoff | [
"ATtiny Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Atmel TPI",
"attiny10"
] | The ATtiny10 – along with its younger siblings that go by the names ATtiny 4, 5, and 9 – are the smallest microcontrollers Atmel makes. With only 32
bytes
of RAM and 1 kB of Flash, there’s still whole lot you can do with this tiny six-pin chip. [feynman17] figured out a way to program this chip
using an Arduino
, allowing him to throw just about anything at this absurdly small microcontroller.
The ATtiny10 doesn’t use the familiar ISP programming header found on other Atmel-based boards. Instead, it uses the exceedingly odd
Tiny Programming Interface
to write bits to the Flash on the chip. [feynman17] realized he could use the Arduino SPI library to communicate with this chip and built a small programming shield with just a few resistors and a 8-pin DIP socket to mount an ATtiny10 breakout board.
After writing a sketch to upload a .hex file from the Arduino serial console, [feynman] had a programmed ATtiny10, ready to be dropped into whatever astonishingly small project he had in mind.
As for what you can do with this small microcontroller,
chiptunes are always an option
, as is making
a very, very small Simon clone
. It may not be a powerhouse, but there’s still a lot you can do with this very inexpensive microcontroller. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "749900",
"author": "jwcxz",
"timestamp": "2012-08-23T15:41:15",
"content": "I’ve been playing with these things for a while and they’re absolutely fantastic; I have a whole slew of projects I want to use them for. The Arduino-as-a-programmer idea is a great one. I ended up using a... | 1,760,376,764.268421 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/23/hackaday-links-august-23-2012/ | Hackaday Links August 23, 2012 | Jeremy Cook | [
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"2D glasses",
"Chinese noodle",
"controller",
"test box",
"throwie"
] | PS3 Controller Cell Phone Mount
Although the details of
this build
are quite scarce, not much is needed considering all that this cell phone/PS3 controller “mount” is made of is 3 binder clips and a few rubber bands. A very ingenious solution.
Overengineered Throwie
On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve spent way too much time
overengineering the throwie
(eventually it ended up using a ping-pong ball). Be sure to watch the first video at 0:32 for an impressive horizontal placement, or check out the baloon throwies at the end of the post for even more fun!
Chinese Noodle Slicing Robot
This robot
may be appropriately engineered in function, but the form of this noodle-slicer has a distinctly Asian style. We think it may have been designed as a prop for a Godzilla movie originally.
2D Glasses
3D glasses may have been all the rage in 2009, but it’s 2012 so you may want to get your hands on
a pair of 2D glasses
. These instructions will tell you how to make glasses to convert a 3D film into 2D if the third dimension annoys you or makes you dizzy. Thx [Brian] and [Victor]!
As seen in
this post
from the Bacteria forum, the test box originally
featured at [HAD]
has now been updated to include variable regulators, volt meters and an LED tester. Check it out on it’s source,
[Downing’s Basement]
. Thx [Mike]! | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "750056",
"author": "Dr. DFTBA",
"timestamp": "2012-08-23T17:02:11",
"content": "Or you could buy Hank Green’s 2D glasses.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "750078",
"author": "Robot",
"timestamp": "2012-08-23T17:17:06",
... | 1,760,376,763.777781 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/23/help-us-decide-if-this-huge-reprap-array-is-the-largest-fleet-to-date/ | Help Us Decide If This Huge Reprap Array Is The Largest Fleet To Date | Mike Nathan | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"MiniMax",
"reprap"
] | Take a minute to think about what your dream job might be.
Done imagining you are a ridiculously wealthy bachelor? Good.
Back here in the real world, [Caleb Cover] has come into what might be one of the coolest hacking-related jobs we’ve seen in awhile. He recently snagged a gig working for Aleph Objects as the
fleet master for a large array of 3D printers.
His duties include the care and feeding of 30 MiniMax-style repraps, a job description we sure wouldn’t mind having.
Aside from merely gloating about his newfound employment, [Caleb] wrote in asking if we knew of a reprap setup larger than the one he is responsible for. We couldn’t come up with one, but perhaps you can.
Right now, [Caleb] says that he’s working on seeing how well the machines can produce parts to replicate themselves, which will certainly make this the largest collective set of production 3D printers sooner or later.
While you hunt down other large reprap setups at your monotonous desk job, check out the video below to hear the symphony of 3D printing that greets [Caleb] at the door each day.
Think you might have seen a 3D printing setup more massive than this one?
Pics
Vids or it didn’t happen. Seriously, we want to see em!
[gigya src=”
http://www.facebook.com/v/4021458368607″
; codebase=”
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0″
; width=”470″] | 27 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "749431",
"author": "aggagagagag",
"timestamp": "2012-08-23T11:15:28",
"content": "falsh video? :(",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "749462",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2012-08-23T11:40:56",
"conten... | 1,760,376,764.021651 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/22/controlling-a-quadcopter-with-a-homebrew-remote/ | Controlling A Quadcopter With A Homebrew Remote | Brian Benchoff | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"MultiWii",
"quadcopter",
"radio",
"remote control",
"wifly"
] | When [Matt] started building his multirotor helicopter, he was far too involved with building his craft than worrying about small details like how to actually control his helicopter. Everything worked out in the end, though, thanks to
his homebrew RC setup
built out of a USB joystick and a few XBees.
After a few initial revisions and a lot of chatting on a multirotor IRC room, [Matt] stumbled across the idea of using
pulse-position modulation
for his radio control setup.
After a few more revisions, [Matt] settled on using an Arduino Pro Mini for his flight computer, paired with
a WiFly module
. By putting his multicopter into Ad-hoc mode, he can connect to the copter with his laptop via WiFi and send commands without the need for a second XBee.
Now, whenever [Matt] wants to fly his multicopter, he plugs the WiFly module into his
MultiWii board
, connects his laptop to the copter, and runs a small Python script. It may not be easier than buying a nice Futaba transmitter, but [Matt] can easily expand his setup as the capabilities of his copter fleet grows.
Video of [Matt]’s copter in flight after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q5dbNigOiQ&w=470] | 15 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "748801",
"author": "Sisco",
"timestamp": "2012-08-22T21:22:00",
"content": "“Video of [Matt]‘s copter breaking after this flight.” :P",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "749092",
"author": "Drake",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,376,763.889783 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/22/network-time-clock-for-a-home-media-center/ | Network Time Clock For A Home Media Center | Brian Benchoff | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"network time",
"SNTP"
] | [Derek] wanted a clock for his media center. A simple wish, but he had a few requirements: he didn’t need an alarm, wanted it to automatically set its time after a power outage, needed a big display, and also wanted it to look good. After shopping around [Derek] couldn’t find a clock that would fit his requirements so
he decided to build one
.
[Derek]’s project is called the SNTP clock. As you might expect, it gets its name from the protocol used to automatically synchronize the clock in your computer with other
network time servers
. The clock itself is built around an ATMega168 gathering time data from the Internet with the help of a
Lantronics XPort
. One inch seven segment LEDs serve as the display for the clock, and everything, from the time offset from UTC, the brightness of the display, and whether the clock displays 12 or 24-hour time is controlled by an infrared Apple remote.
A bare PCB or bundle of wires would look out of place in [Derek]’s media shelf, so he used a metal picture frame and smoked acrylic to dress up his clock. Now he’s got a beautiful and elegant clock that fits right in to his media servers and receiver. | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "748648",
"author": "clvrmnky",
"timestamp": "2012-08-22T19:37:39",
"content": "It’s broken. 17 o’clock ain’t no real time.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "748774",
"author": "n0lkk",
"timestamp": "2012-08-22T20... | 1,760,376,764.497565 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/22/cloning-a-water-based-light-wall-project/ | Cloning A Water-based Light Wall Project | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"graffiti",
"led",
"light",
"light painting",
"water"
] | A few weeks ago, we featured
this water-based LED graffiti art installation
that allows anyone to paint in light using only a bottle of water. When one of [Chris]’ friends saw the video of this build, he immediately asked him how it worked. One thing led to another, and now [Chris] and a few other members at the BUILDS hackerspace at Boston University are building their own
water LED installation
.
The basic premise of this build is allowing water to serve as a conductor between the anode and cathode of a LED. Without spraying or painting water on the circuit [Chris] whipped up, there is an infinite resistance between the two pins of the LED and current cannot flow. After applying water to the anode and cathode pads, a small amount of current is conducted through the water and the LED lights up.
Right now, [Chris] is working on a test board with different sizes of pads and spacing to get the best water graffiti LED effect for his future build. The plan is to build a single one-meter panel out of one hundred 10 cm x 10 cm boards connected together with jumpers.
All of [Chris]’ work is
up on GitHub
, and even though [Chris] hasn’t begun designing the production boards, it’s more than enough to get you started if you’d like your own water LED painting panel. | 25 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "748396",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2012-08-22T17:38:36",
"content": "Not really…. The water doesn’t bridge the anode/cathode of the LED (the junction takes care of that). The water acts as a large-value resistor, connecting power to the LED.In their diagram, the water bridges t... | 1,760,376,764.763693 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/22/no-secret-knocks-required-at-steves-house-your-subway-pass-will-do/ | No Secret Knocks Required At [Steve’s] House – Your Subway Pass Will Do | Mike Nathan | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"door",
"lock",
"rfid"
] | [Steve] is often host to all sorts of guests, and he was looking for an easy way to let his friends come and go as they please. After discovering that his front door came equipped with an electronic strike, he decided that
an RFID reader
would be a great means of controlling who was let in, and when.
Giving all your friends RFID cards and actually expecting that they carry them is a bit of a stretch, but lucky for [Steve] he lives near Boston, so the MBTA has him covered. Just about everyone in town has an RFID subway pass, which pretty much guarantees that [Steve’s] cohorts will be carrying one when they swing by.
He crafted a stylish set of wooden boxes to contain both the RFID reader and the Arduino that controls the system, matching them to the Victorian styling of his home. A single button can control the setup, allowing him to add and remove cards from access lists without much fuss. For more granular control however, [Steve] can always tweak settings from the Arduino serial console.
The card system is both
stylish and useful
– a combination that’s hard to beat. | 26 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "748119",
"author": "xxv",
"timestamp": "2012-08-22T15:42:56",
"content": "Just a small addition: Also included in the setup is an Android app that talks with it via Bluetooth. This app lets you manage the lists (adding / removing) as well as assign one of your phone’s contacts to a ... | 1,760,376,764.617913 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/22/control-raspi-gpio-pins-in-the-browser/ | Control Raspi GPIO Pins In The Browser | Brian Benchoff | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"browser",
"gpio",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspi"
] | Now instead of wrangling Python or PHP to do your bidding, [Eric] came up with a way to
control the GPIO pins on his Raspberry Pi in a browser
.
[Eric] calls his project WebIOPi, and it’s the perfect tool if you’d just like to blink a LED or control a relay over the internet. Simply by pointing his browser to the IP of his Raspi, [Eric] can turn GPIO pins on and off, directly from his desktop browser.
All the code for WebIOPi is available on
[Eric]’s Google code page
. The UI of [Eric]’s project is fully customizable, so it’s entirely possible to control your garage door from a smart phone simply by loading up a web page hosted on your Raspi and pressing a button.
Right now WebIOPi is only able to turn GPIO pins on and off. That will change as [Eric] implements UART, SPI, and I2C in his project, making it possible to do a lot of cool stuff without having to write much – if any – code. | 30 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "747990",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2012-08-22T14:44:50",
"content": "What would be the easiest way to run a solid state relay off of this? Currently I have one running directly from a serial port using the dtr and rts lines with a small program that toggles it, but this would ... | 1,760,376,764.696802 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/22/one-dimensional-pong-is-a-great-use-for-led-strips/ | One Dimensional PONG Is A Great Use For LED Strips | Brian Benchoff | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"led",
"led strip",
"pong"
] | [Jason] has had a five meter addressable RGB LED strip lying around for a while, and only recently came up with a good idea of what to use it for. He came up with
One Dimensional PONG
, and it looks like it’s a blast to play. Instead of moving a paddle up and down, [Jason]’s 1D PONG game requires the players to stomp on a switch to send the ball back to the other player.
The LED strip [Jason] used has an SPI interface, but needed to be PWM clocked to a microcontroller to operate. After whipping up
an Arduino library
for his LED strip, [Jason] built an ATMega328-based controller board and a pair of seven segment display boards to keep track of the score. There’s
a technical overview
in another one of [Jason]’s videos.
[Jason] will be taking his 1D PONG game to the
Brighton Mini Maker Faire
on September 8th. We’re sure his game will be very popular there, so if you see him, tell him Hackaday sent you. | 15 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "747818",
"author": "8complex",
"timestamp": "2012-08-22T13:10:42",
"content": "Hands down, this is awesome. This needs to be a kit, it is perfect for learning on because you get to play with it at the end.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comm... | 1,760,376,764.883009 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/22/turning-a-ds-into-a-game-boy-advance/ | Turning A DS Into A Game Boy Advance | Brian Benchoff | [
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"ds",
"game boy",
"game boy advance",
"nintendo"
] | The venerable Game Boy is dead – and has been for a long time – after being replaced by the DS, DSi, DSi XL, and the 3DS. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing of value to the old Game Boy catalog; Pokemon Red/Blue is still as much fun as it was 15 years ago, and the game play of Advance Wars is still superb.
[Maarten] over at Bureau voor Gamers decided to put a modern twist on our old friend by taking a first-gen DS and
converting it to a proper single screen Game Boy
(Dutch,
Google translation
).
The donor machine was a broken first gen DS with a broken top screen. [Maarten] removed the top screen, did a tiny bit of Bondoing, moved the speaker, and gave his new toy a bright orange paint job.
Now [Maarten] has a modern version of the best portable system ever created, packed full of more powerful hardware and a much more capacious battery. Sure, it’s not a build that requires rewiring
everything,
but it’s still an awesome build for GBA aficionados. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "747838",
"author": "Velli",
"timestamp": "2012-08-22T13:18:51",
"content": "I don’t see a GameBoy in that picture, or that article. What are all these fancy colors and extra letters about?Get off my lawn!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,376,764.826189 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/22/building-a-pbx-setup-around-the-raspberry-pi/ | Building A PBX Setup Around The Raspberry Pi | Mike Szczys | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"asterisk",
"google voice",
"pbx",
"RPi",
"SIP",
"voip"
] | We’re not sure why this use didn’t immediately come to mind when we got our hands on a Raspberry Pi board, but
the hardware is almost perfect as a PBX system
. PBX, or Private Branch Exchange, is basically an in-house phone system. This guide which [Ward] put together shows you how to do some interesting things with it.
When talking about PBX setups the most common software package is Asterisk. That’s what’s at work here, rolled up with a bunch of other helpful software in an RPi targeted distro called Incredible PBX. All it takes to get up and running is to partition and burn the image to an SD like any other RPi distro. The configuration ends up being most of the work, starting with changing the default password, and moving on to customizing the environment to match your phone numbers and your needs. As with
PBX setups on other embedded Linux devices
, Google Voice is your best friend. The service will set you up with a free phone number.
This guide doesn’t delve into hardware connected hand sets. You’ll need to use a SIP phone. But that’s easy enough as there are free apps for most smart phones that will do the trick.
[Thanks Jamie] | 47 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "747661",
"author": "Mathias",
"timestamp": "2012-08-22T11:38:24",
"content": "Am I the only one who would love to have DECT phones used with Asterisk with cheap hardware that is not 5+ years old? I could never (in the forseeable future) convince my Girlfriend to use a smartphone and... | 1,760,376,765.064336 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/21/coin-based-rube-goldberg-helps-bring-in-donations/ | Coin-based Rube Goldberg Helps Bring In Donations | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"coin",
"donations",
"euro",
"poster",
"rube goldberg"
] | This kiosk was conceived as
an interactive poster to help raise donations
for a German relief organization. Instead of just providing a coin jar, the piece puts on a little show of transporting a two-Euro coin from the slot at the top to the repository in the base. Along the way many of the parts move, telling a story in that Rube Goldberg sort of way.
What is surprising to us is how much this looks like one of our own projects — at least up to the point that the display is painted. The link above shows off some pictures from the development stages. The prototype shapes up on an oddly shaped scrap of plywood with the coin’s path plotted out. After the particulars of a trip from point A to point B were established the empty spaces were filled in to add visual interest. If you take a gander at the back of the plywood you get an eyeful of protoboard and draped wires. A camera, Mac Mini, and Dropbox were included in the mix to share an image of the donor on the group’s Facebook page (with the donor’s consent of course).
The piece had a month-long home in the Hamburg airport earlier this year. See what that looked like in the video clip after the break. | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "747219",
"author": "wh0",
"timestamp": "2012-08-22T02:58:23",
"content": "That bags in the perfect place for this…if you see something say something… i’ll show myself out",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "747246",
"author": "v... | 1,760,376,764.980615 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/21/lite-brites-fade-but-led-clocks-are-forever/ | Lite Brites Fade, But LED Clocks Are Forever | Mike Nathan | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"charlieplexing",
"clock",
"led",
"lite-brite",
"toy"
] | Ahh, the Lite Brite.
What could be more fun than pushing dozens of little plastic pegs through a piece of black paper in order to create a pixelated, though colorful image? Well, I can think of quite a few things more engaging than that, and luckily
so can [Lonnie Honeycutt] over at MeanPC.
While contemplating what to build with a pile of LEDs, his daughter came into the room with her portable Lite Brite. He thought that the pegs she was using looked awfully similar to the LEDs on his desk, so he did some test fitting and was surprised to see that they fit almost perfectly.
[Lonnie] thought that the toy would make an excellent clock, and his daughter happily agreed to let Dad do some tinkering. A few hours, an Arduino, and some Charlieplexing later, he had a nice looking clock that his kids were sure to enjoy.
If you’re interested in seeing more about how constructed, be sure to check out his
YouTube channel
and
Instructable
, where he happily provides all of the build details. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "745998",
"author": "joseph",
"timestamp": "2012-08-21T14:39:06",
"content": "Doesn’t an Arduino seems a bit overkill for this project? Cool concept though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "747491",
"author": "Eirinn",
... | 1,760,376,764.930495 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/21/making-sure-a-baby-is-still-breathing-with-lasers-and-a-wiimote/ | Making Sure A Baby Is Still Breathing With Lasers And A Wiimote | Brian Benchoff | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"baby",
"laser",
"wiimote"
] | [Gjoci] just became a father, and to make up for not having to carry a baby to term he decided to make himself useful in another way. He developed
a sensor to detect a baby’s breathing
, allaying the fears of nervous parents who are wondering why their child is so quiet.
Unlike similar builds and products that rely on microphones or capacitive sensors, [Gjoci]’s build uses the camera from a wiimote to triangulate points of light and detect motion.
The build started off with infrared LEDs, but the batteries were big and there is always the possibility of the baby swallowing electrical components. [Gjoci] finally hit upon the idea of using small 1mW laser diodes to project points of light. This worked beautifully, and since newborns don’t move much there’s no danger of shining a laser into a baby’s eye.
The rest of the build is just querying the camera every few milliseconds and seeing if the position of the reflections captured by the wiimote camera have changed. In two weeks of operation, [Gjoci] only had to respond to a few false alarms, and the hardware hasn’t crashed at all.
After the break are three videos [Gjoci] put up for us that show a test of the breathing detection system, a demo of the alarm, and an example of the build in full operation. A very awesome build, and we look forward to this post being used as evidence of prior art in a patent dispute a few years down the line.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO-Q38jyZhY&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7jW8dqi06c&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6-rEoQkr_M&w=470] | 66 | 43 | [
{
"comment_id": "745867",
"author": "0xfred",
"timestamp": "2012-08-21T13:35:46",
"content": "“since newborns don’t move much there’s no danger of shining a laser into a baby’s eye”Let me correct that for you… “Since newborns don’t move much there’s only a relatively small chance of shining a laser ... | 1,760,376,765.17303 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/21/eradicating-invasive-species-with-quadcopters/ | Eradicating Invasive Species With Quadcopters | Brian Benchoff | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"quadcopter",
"robot"
] | That right there is Sydney Golden Wattle, a fast-growing invasive species native to Eastern Australia that has the possibility of covering 20 percent of the bushland in Western Australia by the year 2020. [John Moore], a researcher at the Department of Food and Agriculture, wants to put an end to this infestation by destroying large swaths of wattle
with a quadcopter armed with weed killer
.
The plan for the robotic plant assassins is simple; take aerial photographs of the bushland in Western Austraila and identify stands of individual weeds. [Moore]’s robots are then dispatched to these stands of weeds to spray them down with weed killer.
The quadcopters are armed with a camera, allowing the operator to make sure the robot is hovering directly over the invasive weeds. Considering these weeds are found in somewhat inaccessible places – and the fact that just about everything in Australia is poisonous – these robotic weeders will kill more wattle than what could be done on foot.
We couldn’t find a video of the robot in action, or a demo of the herbicide spay system of [John]’s copter. If you can find one of those,
send it in
and we’ll put it up.
Thanks to [Michal] for sending this in. | 21 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "745756",
"author": "jon",
"timestamp": "2012-08-21T12:48:57",
"content": "I have Japanesse knot weed growing in my back yard, any chance I could get one of these, and have it autonomously identify and spray it?Better still, get a small weed torch on there and it can be used in veget... | 1,760,376,765.23091 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/21/toorcamp-the-tesla-gun/ | Toorcamp: The Tesla Gun | Eric Evenchick | [
"cons"
] | [
"high voltage",
"tesla coil",
"tesla gun",
"toorcamp"
] | We discussed [Rob]’s
Tesla Gun
in the
past
. At that time, the build looked very impressive, but had not been fired yet. Fortunately, [Rob] got the device working and brought it to Toorcamp. He took the gun out every night and demoed the handheld Tesla Coil by having volunteers catch the streamers with a knife.
The gun uses a cordless drill battery for power, and a flyback transformer to generate the ~20,000 volts needed to drive the coil. The power electronics module was designed to be easy to replace, and [Rob] had extras at Toorcamp in case he burnt one up. [Rob]’s build log is very detailed, and definitely worth reading through. It explains how he cast the enclosure out of aluminium, built a custom porcelain high voltage switch, and designed the power electronics.
While this build should probably get a “do not try this at home” label, he definitely created something unique. We’re looking forward to when [Rob] shows the gun off next. | 10 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "745832",
"author": "JamieWho",
"timestamp": "2012-08-21T13:21:58",
"content": "Came here hoping to see a working version of a Warehouse Agent weapon by the same name. Not disappointed. :)It is a little larger than the version on the show, but still awesome.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,376,765.282392 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/20/ir-remote-as-pc-input/ | IR Remote As PC Input | Mike Szczys | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"attiny2313",
"ir receiver",
"manchester encoding",
"remote control",
"rs232"
] | As a learning experience [GeriBoss] put together
an IR remote control receiver board for his PC
. His want of volume control from across the room was reason enough to undertake the project, and he got to work with a 38 kHz receiver module and Manchester encoding in the process.
The decoder portion of the project is built around an ATtiny2313 chip. The external interrupt pin (INT0) is connected to a TSOP31238. When it decodes a valid remote code it pushes a character to the RS232 chip connecting to the computer’s serial port.
We think this is a wonderful accomplishment for [GeriBoss], but we encourage him to refine the design further. You’ll notice in the image there’s a USB port on the board which is only used to provide regulated power. We know it’s possible to
use V-USB with the ATtiny2313 to add USB functionality
and this would be a great way to learn about it. We’d also like to mention the resistor and capacitor suggested for filtering the IR receiver module signal. We’ve included the recommended application schematic for that part after the break. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "745009",
"author": "Jose",
"timestamp": "2012-08-21T00:34:47",
"content": "Wow. Isn’t this “hack”-a-day? Who are you guys, his mom?It’s kind of ridiculous (and insulting) to show off someone else’s project and then “finish” it for him.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"r... | 1,760,376,765.361062 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/20/cmos-logic-clock-tracks-24-hour-time/ | CMOS Logic Clock Tracks 24-hour Time | Mike Szczys | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"7 segment",
"bcd",
"cmos",
"decade counter",
"logic"
] | Here’s
an IC logic project that displays 24-hour time
. Planning was the name of the game for this project. [Mattosx] took the time to layout his design as a PCB in order to avoid the
wiring nightmare when build with point-to-point connections
.
Much of the complexity is caused by the display itself. Each of the six digits has its own binary-coded decimal chip and array of discrete resistors. Timekeeping is handled by six decade counters, two divider chips, one AND gate chip, and one OR gate chip. He chose a SOIC crystal oscillator chip as the clock signal. We’re more partial to the idea of
using mains voltage as the clock signal
.
[Mattosx] posted the board artwork if you’d like to etch your own 5″x8″ PCB. Just make sure you read through all of his notes as not all of the chips are oriented in the same direction.
[via
Reddit
] | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "744923",
"author": "steve",
"timestamp": "2012-08-20T23:34:47",
"content": "Awesome build and ruined it with using the line frequency as clock source. Too bad, that is only long term stable. Short term is very inaccurate.They should just do it the classical way: use a 32 kHz clock ... | 1,760,376,765.615061 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/20/making-a-gigantic-18-pole-16-throw-switch/ | Making A Gigantic 18 Pole 16 Throw Switch | Brian Benchoff | [
"hardware"
] | [
"console",
"Project Unity",
"retro",
"switch"
] | When you’re building something that hasn’t been done before, sometimes the parts you need just don’t exist.
[Bacteria] over on the Made by Bacteria forum is building a huge all-in-one video game machine, combining hardware from 16 different consoles released through the years. This build requires a way to switch the video output between consoles, so [Bacteria]
made a gigantic 18 pole 16 throw switch
.
The build began with [Bacteria] sourcing a few 8-pole switches. Of course this switch was too small to toggle between the 16 output lines for each system, so these switches were doubled up and activated by a single button. This system worked, but the results weren’t ideal.
[Bacteria] gave in to the temptation of building his own switch by using spring-loaded metal nuts as the contacts for each part of the switch, allowing him to switch between consoles with a simple sliding contact.
So far, it looks like [Bacteria]’s
Project Unity
is shaping up nicely. We’ve seen a bit of
the controller portion
of [Bac]’s build, and already it’s shaping up to be a wonder of retro gaming.
You can check out [Bacteria]’s breakdown of his switch after the break and his Instructable
here
.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSyHcFT99V0&w=470] | 51 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "744695",
"author": "andres",
"timestamp": "2012-08-20T21:40:49",
"content": "why not use an analog mux?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "744720",
"author": "Mikey",
"timestamp": "2012-08-20T21:55:39",
"c... | 1,760,376,765.45546 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/21/retrotechtacular-1983s-answer-to-information-overload/ | Retrotechtacular: 1983’s Answer To Information Overload | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"att",
"knight-ridder",
"retrotechtacular",
"sceptre",
"terminal",
"videotex"
] | We can’t say we ever really thought that the problem with the early 1980’s was too much information in the hands of the people. But
this promotional video for the Sceptre Videotex Terminal
claims that it is the solution to the information overload of the time. The entire video is embedded after the break.
You use your TV as a display, connecting the hardware to a phone line and using a keyboard for navigation. Perhaps our favorite bit is when the announcer informs us that the secret behind the system is its “vast sources of information”. These include the Miami Herald, the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, and Consumer Reports. Just remember that at the time you’d need to hit the local library to access all of those resources. Also, searching them wasn’t a possibility.
But wait, this wasn’t just conceived for news. The system — which was backed by Night-Ridder (a huge Newspaper conglomerate) and AT&T — boasted commerce and banking abilities as well as education services. It’s the vision of the Internet which Ma Bell would have preferred to be in place today.
[via
Gizmodo
] | 37 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "746936",
"author": "ddgh",
"timestamp": "2012-08-21T22:39:55",
"content": "access to wires and basically the precursor to the bloomberg. neat.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "747004",
"author": "xtremegamer",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,376,765.865631 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/21/passion-fruit-acquire-laser-defenses/ | Passion Fruit Acquire Laser Defenses | Mike Szczys | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"cell",
"copper",
"galvanized",
"passion fruit",
"zinc"
] | Apparently being overrun by ripe Passion Fruit is a problem if you live in Hawaii. [Ryan K’s] solution to the situation was to use
his extra fruit to power a laser
. In an experiment that
would make [Walter White] proud
, [Ryan] gathered everyday supplies to form a battery based on the fruit.
He used some galvanized bolts as the source of zinc. It forms one pole of each cell, with a thin copper tube as the other pole. Each cell is rather weak, but when combined with others it makes a respectable battery. We’ve seen
acidic fruit used to power LEDs
, but [Ryan] wanted to do a little more. He built a circuit that would store electricity until he had enough potential to power an LED diode. After the break you can see a four second clip of the fruit wielding its new laser defense system.
[Thanks Jerry] | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "746875",
"author": "NewCommentor1283",
"timestamp": "2012-08-21T21:44:13",
"content": "this project too needs a mad-scientist “knife switch” XD",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "746917",
"author": "majordump",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,376,765.788909 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/21/portable-light-box-for-small-photography-needs/ | Portable Light Box For Small Photography Needs | Mike Szczys | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"ikea",
"light box",
"light tent"
] | [Paulo] needed to photograph small objects on the go. Since you can’t always depend on ambient lighting conditions
he built a battery operated light box
which is easy to take along on his travels.
We’ve featured
portable light tents
before, but they still tend to be a bit too bulky for his tastes. He chose to go with a white plastic storage container from Ikea. It’s lightweight, and acts as a diffuser for the light sources. Four strips, each hosting three LEDs, were mounted on the exterior of the container. Half of a PVC pipe protects the boards while providing a way to fasten the strips in place using nuts and bolts. The driver board and batteries find a home inside of a travel container for a bar of soap.
He likes the results, especially when a glossy white piece of paper is used as a top reflector. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "747533",
"author": "Eirinn",
"timestamp": "2012-08-22T09:17:25",
"content": "Hmm I’ve heard people complain about colour ranges in white LEDs. Wonder if it will affect this project :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "747641",
... | 1,760,376,765.664465 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/21/arduino-wifi-shield-available-costs-85-usd/ | Arduino WiFi Shield Available, Costs $85 USD | Brian Benchoff | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"shield",
"wifi"
] | Over on the Arduino blog, the release of the official
Arduino WiFi shield was just announced
. On the
spec page
for this WiFi shield. we can see this new board isn’t a slouch; it’s powered by a 32-bit ATMega 32UC3 microcontroller, has provisions for WEP and WPA2 encryption, and supports both TCP and UDP with the
Arduino WiFi library
. It also costs €69/$85/£55 from the
Arduino store
.
Now that the announcement of the Arduino WiFi shield is over with, we’ll take this opportunity to go through a few other WiFi adapters for the Arduino that don’t cost an arm and a leg.
The WiFly shield –
available from Sparkfun
– is a WiFi adapter with the same form factor as the ever popular XBee modules. Of course, it’s possible to make your own breakout board; the WiFly only needs a TX, RX, power and ground connection to connect your Arduino project to the Internet.
We’ve seen a few projects use the
WiShield from async labs
. It’s a WiFi module packaged in the familiar Arduino shield form factor, and costs $55 USD.
For the hardcore hackers out there, you could always get a
bare Microchip WiFi module
and get it to work with an AVR as [Quinn Dunki] attempted to. In all fairness, [Quinn] was trying to de-Arduinofy the WiFi library; if you’re cool with Arduino code swimming around in your project, this method will probably work.
There’s also the very,
very
cool
Electric Imp
. Basically, it’s an SD card with a built-in WiFi module. After configuring the Imp by holding it up to patterns flashing on your smartphone screen, this device serves as a transparent bridge to the magical ‘cloud’ we’ve been hearing about. The Electric Imp was supposed to have been released in late July/early August, and we’ll put a post up when this cool device actually launches.
Of course we’re neglecting the simplest solution to getting WiFi running on an Arduino project:
just use a wireless router
. Really, all you need is a pair of TX and RX pins and a copy of OpenWRT. Easy, and you probably have the necessary hardware lying around.
We’re missing a few methods of Arduinofying a WiFi connection (or WiFying an Arduino…), but we’ll let our readers finish what we started in the comments. | 35 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "746692",
"author": "Kenny K",
"timestamp": "2012-08-21T19:46:14",
"content": "Or you know, use a Raspberry Pi w/Wifi adapter for ~ $60 including S&H and power supply.And you could probably get away with dropping the Arduino depending on what you are trying to accomplish.",
"pare... | 1,760,376,765.738312 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/21/building-a-resistor-substitution-decade-box/ | Building A Resistor Substitution Decade Box | Mike Szczys | [
"News"
] | [
"decade",
"substitution",
"switches",
"thumbwheel"
] | [George] built
an incredibly tidy resistor substitution decade box
. These devices feature a pair of connections and a way to select the resistance between the two of them. In [George’s] case it’s a pair of banana jacks and these eight thumbwheel switches.
What you see above is the side of each thumbwheel switch. These are panel mount devices which show one digit with an up and down button to change the setting. As you can see, the PCB for each provides connections to which a set of resistors can be mounted. This is the difficult part which he goes to great lengths to explain.
At this point he’s got the resistor groups for each digit soldered in place, the next step is to stack the switches next to each other and connect them electrically. From there it’s off to a project box in which they will be mounted.
This project does a great job of explaining the assembly process. If you’re interested in the theory behind a substitution box
check out this other project
. | 24 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "746514",
"author": "Slipster",
"timestamp": "2012-08-21T18:35:22",
"content": "I’d buy one (or many) of those in a second if produced.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "746550",
"author": "trimmer?",
"timestamp": "2012-08-... | 1,760,376,765.987855 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/21/128-inch-silver-screen-for-your-viewing-room/ | 128-inch Silver Screen For Your Viewing Room | Mike Szczys | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"frame",
"projection screen",
"projector",
"spandex"
] | This
huge projection screen fills an odd alcove
in [Dodge Boy’s] screening room. He built it himself for under $200. The materials, tools, and techniques make this a possibility for anyone who wants their own projection setup.
The frame is made of pine 1×3 dimensional lumber. To keep the fabric from touching the supports in the center of the frame he added quarter-round trim to around the perimeter. From there he painted it black and went for a test-fit. The bad news is that the drywall is neither perfectly flat, nor parallel/square. He ended up taking the trim off and ripping down one side of the frame. That did the trick and he went on to stretch spandex over the whole thing. The frame hangs from a french cleat on either side of the opening. From what we can tell, the surface is just fabric and not
painted as we usually see
with these setups.
[Dodge Boy’s] utility room shares the back wall of the screening room. That’s where he stores the HTPC which feeds he project, with an RF remote to control it through the wall.
[via
Reddit
] | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "746618",
"author": "cplamb",
"timestamp": "2012-08-21T19:23:53",
"content": "Is the screen really silver? A silver screen is required to preserve polarization for 3D projection.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "746709",
... | 1,760,376,765.922833 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/21/use-a-nokia-n82-tft-panel-with-your-arduino/ | Use A Nokia N82 TFT Panel With Your Arduino | Jeremy Cook | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Cellphone Hacks"
] | [
"arduino mega",
"nokia",
"tft"
] | [Andy] has been hard at work reverse-engineering the Nokia N82 2.4 inch cell phone display
for use with an Arduino
. As pointed out in the article, this same 2.4 inch display can be found in at least seven other Nokia products, so they are readily available. The panels can be found for as low as 3 pounds (or a little less than 5 dollars) on Ebay.
The results are quite good and can be seen in the videos after the break. The first demo displays a simulated weather report, and the second displays some JPEG images. Although an Arduino Mega was used in this demonstration, a standard Arduino can be used as well. Schematics as well as a bill of materials is included in the article, however if you’d rather just buy a board, he’s selling the rest of what he’s built on a first come first served basis. No word on how many he has in stock though!
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtZ-iYut0dw&w=470&h=315%5D
[youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Zuu6Df5mQ&w=470&h=315%5D | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "746118",
"author": "indiantinker",
"timestamp": "2012-08-21T15:38:12",
"content": "Awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "746123",
"author": "Hack Man",
"timestamp": "2012-08-21T15:40:27",
"content": "Semi repost b... | 1,760,376,766.041967 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/20/a-visually-satisfying-tape-ticker/ | A Visually Satisfying Tape Ticker | Mike Szczys | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"receipt printer",
"thermal printer",
"ticker"
] | This
visually stunning tape ticker
prints out [Horatius Steam’s] emails for him. It watches his email address for a secret trigger phrase in the subject line. Sure,
thermal receipt printer projects
are becoming rather common, but we can’t remember seeing one that took this much time and effort to make it into a showpiece.
The two parts that make this happen are the thermal printer with cutter module and the glass dome which is just large enough to house the business end of it. The driver PCB for the printer is hidden in the base (a paper tube which is painted to took like wood), which positions the outfeed near the bottom of the dome. This had the added benefit of leaving plenty of room for [Horatius] to proudly display the paper roll. Since the receipt printer is designed to work with a Windows machine there was no custom circuitry necessary. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "744583",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2012-08-20T20:42:13",
"content": "That there’s some pretty, you should also link to “Dr. Brain”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "744688",
"author": "ApexLogic",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,376,766.085533 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/20/high-voltage-rov-adventures/ | High Voltage ROV Adventures | Mike Szczys | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"cat5e",
"rov",
"Tether",
"underwater"
] | [Eirik] wrote in to share
the build log for the third iteration of his underwater ROV
. The first two project were completed and tested (you may remember
reading about it
back in January), but both had issues that caused general failure. Most notably, the introduction of water where he didn’t want it. But this time around he seems to have gotten everything right, successfully taking this little guy down to twenty meters without a leak.
One of the problems he had on version two was supplying electricity from the surface. He needs 12V at up to 10A, and had to use a tether made of 14 AWG to make it happen. That’s a lot of heavy wire to be hauling around and it made the ROV virtually unable to move itself. He wanted to go back to using Cat5e cable but it won’t handle that kind of current. He ended up using an inverter at the surface to up the voltage to 130V, and a switch mode supply on the ROV to get back to 12V. This caused noise on the data lines which he fixed by adding a full-wave rectifer to the inverter’s output.
The dive video after the break shows off the crystal-clear camera shots this thing can capture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QBmg7LVZgQ | 19 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "744464",
"author": "brad",
"timestamp": "2012-08-20T19:53:20",
"content": "Embedding = Broken",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "744469",
"author": "linksaregood",
"timestamp": "2012-08-20T19:56:16",
"content": "Thanks ... | 1,760,376,766.205972 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/20/summer-vacation-home-for-the-indoor-cats/ | Summer Vacation Home For The Indoor Cats | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"cat",
"cat door",
"chicken wire",
"enclosure",
"window"
] | Throw your indoor cat a bone (or a tuna steak as it were) this year by
building them a summer vacation spot
. Since [Travis Brown] lives on a busy street he worries that his cat would get hit by a car if allowed to roam outside. He and a friend found a suitable alternative with this outdoor cat enclosure.
The centerpiece of the build is a platform that overlooks the back yard. It’s got a couple of different levels which lets the cat see over the deck railing, and provides a bit of shade from the sun during the day. Chicken wire encloses the entire structure to make sure our feline friends don’t go off on their own, but the gang-plank that connects the platform to the house lets them decide when to go outside or come back in. The entrance to the house is an open window covered with plywood and fitted with a cat door. This is a nice touch since the cat door can be locked to keep them in a night.
Between this for summer and
the heated bed for winter
you’re going to have the most spoiled cat on the block. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,376,766.14746 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/20/raspberry-pi-as-an-avr-programmer/ | Raspberry Pi As An AVR Programmer | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [] | AVR programmers can be bought for just a few dollars on the Internet, but if you’re building an expansion board with an AVR for your Raspi,
this is the build for you
. It’s a safe way of programming an AVR via the Raspi’s GPIO pins that uses an extremely minimal circuit.
The AVR ISP interface looks a lot like an SPI interface, and the easiest way to program an AVR with a Raspi would be to bitbang all the commands from the GPIO pins. Sometimes, though, the logic of the AVR and Raspi would be at different levels, so while bitbanging may work in a pinch it’s not something anyone should use regularly.
To get the Raspi and AVR talking to each other safely, [Steve] built a small circuit from a 74244 buffer and a FET. With the added support for
Linux GPIO avrdude programming
, it’s a snap to program an AVR with a Raspi.
A few days ago we ran across
a hugely overwrought PIC programmer for the Raspi
, so we’re glad to see another round in the PIC/AVR holy war go to the AVR camp.
Thanks [Mateusz] for sending this one in. | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "744317",
"author": "johnlmitchell",
"timestamp": "2012-08-20T18:54:42",
"content": "Here’s Steve Marple’s blog post, including schematic:http://blog.stevemarple.co.uk/2012/07/avrarduino-isp-programmer-using.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,376,766.352111 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/20/rendering-openscad-in-the-browser/ | Rendering OpenSCAD In The Browser | Brian Benchoff | [
"cnc hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"javascript",
"openscad"
] | If you haven’t heard of it, OpenSCAD is a really wonderful tool for 3D modeling. While it doesn’t have the traditional graphical interface of AutoCAD – it’s basically a programming language for 3D models – OpenSCAD is able to create very complex parts with only a few lines of code.
That’s all well and good, but what if you wanted to edit OpenSCAD parts in your browser?
Enter OpenJsCAD
, an OpenSCAD interpreter written entirely in Javascript and able to be embedded in a web page.
OpenSCAD
allows for two types of modeling – constructive solid geometry, or taking 3D primitives and stretching, scaling, and intersecting them to create a 3D shape, or extrusion from a 2D outline. Quite a few RepRap parts were designed in OpenSCAD, and the lightweight interface and open source nature means it’s perfect for designing stuff to print on your Makerbot.
Tip ‘o the hat to [Gordon] for sending this one in, and we really have to commend him for
writing his own online scriptable CAD exporter
before finding out about OpenJsCAD. He may be a little late to the online OpenSCAD party, but we have to agree with him that an online 3D solid editor would be an awesome feature for
Thingiverse
to roll out. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "744256",
"author": "daid303",
"timestamp": "2012-08-20T18:22:35",
"content": "I can make OpenSCAD crawl, guess an online version wouldn’t improve that.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "744462",
"author": "0xfred",
... | 1,760,376,766.400039 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/20/new-and-improved-old-hackaday-store/ | New And Improved Old Hackaday Store! | Caleb Kraft | [
"News"
] | [
"merchandise",
"shirt",
"store"
] | I am going to start off by saying our zazzle store was pretty sad. The prices were just way too high. I put that store into place because frankly, the one I was running was a pain in the butt.
The good news is that I’ve got a new system in place
. It is bright and shiny and looks much easier to use. Not only that, but since we’re not using someone like zazzle, we’re keeping the cost down! Or standard shirts are $18. We have stickers too, and this time, we have both standard stickers as well as the custom cut vinyl decals everyone loved before.
Several products have not yet arrived. Since this is the grand opening and I feel a little bad about how expensive the zazzle store was, I’m running a special.
$16 for shirts if they’re ordered before August 31st.
I’m talking to other people about offering some products besides shirts and stickers in the store. Stay tuned to see what we’ve got going on! | 20 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "744071",
"author": "signal7",
"timestamp": "2012-08-20T16:51:23",
"content": "I’d order a shirt if it came in my size: 2xl. I don’t know too many hackers that would wear a size small :-) Just a suggestion…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"... | 1,760,376,766.460326 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/20/reliving-the-bbs-days-with-a-propeller/ | Reliving The BBS Days With A Propeller | Brian Benchoff | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"bbs",
"Parallax Propeller",
"propeller"
] | Back before the world wide web, self-proclaimed geeks would get our compute on by dialing in to bulletin board systems. In their heyday, these BBSes were filled with interesting people and warez to fill the most capacious 10 Megabyte hard drive. In an attempt to relive the days of the Internet before the Eternal September, [Jeff Ledger]
whipped up a tutorial for dialing up BBSes
with an updated classic computer.
Instead of doing this tutorial with a C64 or an Apple II, [Jeff] used the Propeller powered
Pocket Mini Computer
he designed. This computer features 32Kb of RAM inside an eight-core Parallax Propeller along with a BASIC interpreter to run your own programs.
This Mini Computer can connect to BBS systems, but seeing as how acoustically coupled modems are rare as hen’s teeth these days, [Jeff] thought it would be a good idea to log in to the
many Internet connected BBS servers
using his desktop as a bridge between the Propeller and the Internet.
After [Jeff] got his Propeller computer up and running on a BBS, he was free to play
Trade Wars
or slay grues in one of the many MUDs still running. Not bad for a demonstration of the Internet of old, and made even better by the use of a Propeller. | 17 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "744111",
"author": "fotoflojoe",
"timestamp": "2012-08-20T17:15:09",
"content": "Ahh… The good old days.Get off my lawn.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "744130",
"author": "Adam",
"timestamp": "2012-08-20T17:25:11",
... | 1,760,376,766.526535 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/20/toorcamp-nibble-node-js-widget/ | Toorcamp: Nibble Node.js Widget | Eric Evenchick | [
"cons"
] | [
"arduino",
"node.js",
"toorcamp"
] | The hardware hacking village at Toorcamp provided space and tools to work on hardware. It was interesting to see what hardware hacks people had brought to work on. One example is [
Owen
]’s
Nibble
Node.js Widget. The widget combines the popular
node.js
platform and custom hardware to create a node for the “internet of things.” The hardware consists of a Arduino Pro Micro, a bluetooth module, a LCD display, and a speaker in a laser cut box.
By using a custom package in node.js, the Nibble becomes an object which can be controlled by its methods. This allows for the developer to push messages to the display and control the device without worrying about the details of the hardware. Since node.js is designed for web applications, it’s simple to make the device controllable from the web.
[Owen] also wrote an emulator for the DCPU from the upcoming game,
0x10c
. DCPU assembly is passed in from node.js, which compiles it and sends it to the Nibble. The device can then run the application using the DCPU emulation, which also allows for control of the display and the speaker.
There’s a lot of neat things that can be done with this minuscule cube, and [Owen] plans to release an NPM package for the node.js code. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "743629",
"author": "1one",
"timestamp": "2012-08-20T13:19:15",
"content": "I still don’t have a clue on what is the “internet of things”. Is it the new “cloud”?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "743683",
"author": "muria... | 1,760,376,766.775624 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/20/toorcamp-the-church-of-robotron/ | Toorcamp: The Church Of Robotron | Eric Evenchick | [
"cons"
] | [
"arcade",
"dorkbot pdx",
"robotron",
"toorcamp"
] | “Only 72 years until the Robotrons conclude that the human race is inefficient and must be destroyed. Only the mutant produced by a genetic engineering accident can save us now!” –Church of Robotron Doctrine
Based on the 1982 arcade game Robotron: 2084, Dorkbot PDX’s
Church of Robotron
was an impressive installation at Toorcamp. Located in a large dome, the Chruch features an altar where the the player kneels and finds out if they are the saviour.
Many things in the Church are triggered by game events. Lasers fired in time with the game, a bright LED flashes at the player when they die, and the LCD display above the altar shows high scores. There’s a webcam that takes a player’s picture when they die so that it can be added to the high score list. There was also a Jacob’s Ladder and a fog machine to add to the eerie feel of the Church.
A side room in the dome has a TV displaying list of high scores, handouts of their doctrine and documentation, and stickers of the Church’s logo. Aside from the electronics, the group also created lore around the installation. There was a
sermon
that played on a constant loop at night, and the doctrine handouts explained the story of the Church. This is all documented on their website, and the
build details
and
source
are also available.
The combination of art, lore, and electronics made this installation one of my favourites at Toorcamp, even though I’m awful at the game. I’ll need to practice my Robotron for next time the group sets up the Church. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "744114",
"author": "ffffffff",
"timestamp": "2012-08-20T17:17:28",
"content": "ALL MUST BE TESTED",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "745324",
"author": "Roger Wilco",
"timestamp": "2012-08-21T05:17:02",
"content": "i st... | 1,760,376,766.726829 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/19/controlling-a-spud-gun-with-an-arduino/ | Controlling A Spud Gun With An Arduino | Brian Benchoff | [
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"gun",
"pneumatic",
"spud gun"
] | We’re a long way from the Aquanet-powered plastic pipe spud guns of our youth. [smirpab] over on the SpudFiles forum
posted a work in progress
of an amazing replica AS50 sniper rifle he’s building. This pneumatic cannon goes above and beyond any air-powered rifle we’ve seen with an Arduino that is able to switch between automatic, semi-automatic, and burst modes with an LCD display and a rate of fire control.
The mechanics of [smirpab]’s build are fairly normal for this level of pneumatic gun; it shoots 6mm plastic pellets from a smooth bore barrel with using air compressed to about 10 bar (145 psi). The electronics is where this project really shines, with an Arduino controlling the mode of fire (auto, semi-auto, and a 3-round burst), and the number of rounds per second adjustable with a pot.
A very cool project, and looking at the CAD renders of what [smirpab] completed project will look like, we can’t wait to see this build finished. As always, this build comes with the standard Hackaday “you’ll put your eye out, kid” warning. You can check out a video of [smirpab]’s piston after the break, along with a demo of the Arduino-powered control circuit going through all three firing modes.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watchv=ImzcSCHBpsc&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JiIHEzi18c&w=470] | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "742709",
"author": "Hack Man",
"timestamp": "2012-08-19T19:13:36",
"content": "STOP USING COMPRESSED AIR IN PVC PIPE!!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "742711",
"author": "Hack Man",
"timestamp": "2012-08-19T19... | 1,760,376,766.827213 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/19/programming-the-xmega-with-an-isp/ | Programming The XMEGA With An ISP | Brian Benchoff | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"Atmel",
"isp",
"PDI",
"usbasp",
"xmega"
] | Atmel’s XMEGA series of microcontrollers are neat little pieces of hardware; with a very fast clock, a ton of IO, USB, and up to 8 UART ports, these neat little chips serve as a nice bridge between AVRs and PICs and the very powerful ARM chips coming out on the market. Unfortunately, the XMEGAs don’t use the extremely common ISP programming header found on just about every AVR dev board making them a bear to program. [Szu] over in Poland
came up with a very easy way to program these chips
, all while using the programming hardware you already have on hand.
[Szu]’s build uses a few resistors and diodes to break out a USBASP connection to the XMEGA’s
PDI interface
. On the software side of things, [Szu] wrote an update to the USBASP firmware to allow it to program PDI devices, and also has a patch for AVRdude to allow uploading firmware from the command line.
A very cool build, and one that allows for very, very powerful devices that build on the AVR code you’ve already written. | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "742579",
"author": "yetihehe",
"timestamp": "2012-08-19T17:45:03",
"content": "PCB on cardboard is a nice touch ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "742856",
"author": "jonny",
"timestamp": "2012-08-19T21:18:30",
"cont... | 1,760,376,766.874929 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/19/very-inexpensive-rf-module-tutorial/ | Very Inexpensive RF Module Tutorial | Brian Benchoff | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"freescale",
"radio",
"TLP434A",
"wireless"
] | Let’s say you need a way to make a project wireless, but don’t have the scratch for a ZigBee or its ilk. You could use IR, but that has a limited range and can only work within a line of sight of the receiver. [Camilo]
sent in a project
(Spanish,
translation
) to connect two devices via a wireless serial connection. As a small bonus, his wireless setup is cheap enough to create a wireless network of dozens of sensors.
[Camilo] used the
TLP434A
transmitter/receiver combination to get his wireless project off the ground. These small devices only cost about $5, but being so inexpensive means the hardware designer needs to whip up their own communications protocol.
For a microcontroller, [Camilo] chose a Freescale MC9S08QC, a pleasant refrain from the AVR or PIC we normally see. After making a small board for his transmitter, [Camilo] had a very small remote control, able to send button presses or other data to a remote receiver.
After the break, you can see a short demo video [Camilo] posted of his wireless transmitter turning on an LED attached to his receiver. Unfortunately, this video was filmed with a potato, but all the schematics and code is on his web site for your perusal.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuhHdqkhlys&w=470] | 39 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "742431",
"author": "Sven",
"timestamp": "2012-08-19T15:16:36",
"content": "Now if you only need to transmit button presses there are ready made receiver/decoders and transmitter/encoders for this purpose that can be ordered for about $5 per pair, 4 buttons in, 4 logic signals out.",... | 1,760,376,767.025967 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/19/real-time-gps-decoding-with-software-defined-radio/ | Real Time GPS Decoding With Software Defined Radio | Brian Benchoff | [
"News",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"gps",
"RTLSDR",
"software-defined radio"
] | In case the Realtek RTL2832u-based USB TV tuner dongle isn’t useful enough, the folks behind a project to get a software defined GPS receiver off the ground
successfully plotted GPS data in real-time
with this very inexpensive radio.
Previously, we’ve seen these dongles
grab data from GPS satellites
– useful if you’re building a GPS-based clock – but this build required hours of data collection to plot your location on a map.
The folks working on the GNSS-SDR project used an RTL2832 USB TV tuner and a Garmin active GPS antenna to track up to four GPS satellites in real-time and plot a location accurate to about 200 meters.
The Google Earth plot for this post shows the data collected by the GNSS-SDR team; the antenna was fixed at the red arrow for the entirety of the test, and the yellow lines represent a change in the calculated location every 10 seconds. Amazing work, and only goes to show what this remarkable piece of hardware is capable of. | 30 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "742328",
"author": "presjar",
"timestamp": "2012-08-19T13:42:28",
"content": "I’m sorry, but this is just stupid. Why bother? It is too inaccurate for anything useful and it takes more time and effort than to just use a $50 android phone.Just lame.",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,376,766.947534 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/18/toorcamp-kelp-horns/ | Toorcamp: Kelp Horns | Eric Evenchick | [
"cons"
] | [
"toorcamp"
] | [Ari] and Jake from
Noisebridge
were out on the beach at Toorcamp when they saw some giant kelp and had an idea. Using a pocketknife, [Ari] cut a mouthpiece into the stem and cut the bulb in half. After some practice, they figured out how to play the kelp horn. [
Jimmie
], shown here, was able to get a pretty good range of notes out of it by playing it like a bugle. [
Neil
] tried to cut holes into the stem to play it like a flute.
The horns were fairly loud, so they attracted a few people who wanted to make their own. Once the group had six or seven horns playing various tones, they headed to the camp to show off their new instruments. They weren’t quite in tune, and didn’t taste very good, but they did make a variety of odd sounding tones. Leave it to a camp of hackers to make musical instruments of whatever they find washed up on shore.
[Photo
maltman23
] | 19 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "741516",
"author": "Dax",
"timestamp": "2012-08-18T20:02:43",
"content": "Any sound samples?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "741521",
"author": "Mojo",
"timestamp": "2012-08-18T20:10:20",
"content": "This is so far f... | 1,760,376,767.081001 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/18/an-adafruit-raspberry-pi-extravaganza/ | An Adafruit Raspberry Pi Extravaganza | Brian Benchoff | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"dac",
"i2c",
"lcd display",
"Occidentalis",
"servo"
] | The folks at Adafruit are busy as a bee working on bringing some of their really cool boards to the Raspberry Pi platform. Here’s a few that came in over the last few days:
16 servos is almost too many
Servos require a PWM output but the Raspi only has hardware support for PWM on a single GPIO pin; certainly not enough to build a gigantic, city-leveling robot. [Kevin] over at Adafruit
put together a tutoria
l for using
this 16 channel servo driver
with the Raspi.
12 bit DAC
With only one PWM pin and no analog out, it was only a matter of time before someone hooked up the
Adafruit 12 bit DAC to the Raspberry Pi
.
16×2 LCD displays
Both the servo and DAC builds use the
Adafruit I2C library
and a bit of Python. Of course it’s possible to treat the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi as digital outs, just as [Mikey] did with his
Raspi LCD display tutorial
.
So, what distro are you using?
Of course all these builds use Adafruit’s
Occidentalis distro
, a maker-friendly Linux distro we’ve posted about before. It’s too useful to languish as a single Hackaday post, so here it is again. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "741501",
"author": "biqut2",
"timestamp": "2012-08-18T19:44:13",
"content": "I’m waiting to see the rpi running LinuxCNC and interfaced to something like the G540.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "741623",
"author": "wardmund... | 1,760,376,767.23602 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/18/expand-your-pi-with-a-gertboard/ | Expand Your Pi With A Gertboard | Caleb Kraft | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"raspberry",
"Raspi"
] | [Gert van Loo], the person who designed the alpha hardware for the Raspberry pi model B, has put out an expansion board for the Raspberry pi that we think many of you might be interested in seeing. Dubbed
the Gertboard, this expands the Raspi
with some GPIO goodness.
We have seen TONS of tutorials for the Raspberry pi, and a few projects as well. We’re hoping that we’ll start seeing more projects where the Raspberry pi is the brain, but only part of the project, start becoming more frequent. The board is pretty cool, now lets see what you guys can build with all that power!
[thanks Zimm3rmann] | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "741371",
"author": "Radamand",
"timestamp": "2012-08-18T17:21:10",
"content": "US $46.50 and it’s not even assembled?I like the idea of the Gertboard but, it costs more than the Pi itself?!?I’ll wait for Gert2.0 maybe…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,376,767.132453 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/18/making-the-arduino-sleep-the-long-sleep/ | Making The Arduino Sleep The Long Sleep | Caleb Kraft | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"HackIt"
] | [
"arduino",
"low power"
] | Earlier this week, I showed you [Naim Busek’s]
kickstarter for his turn signal helmet
. In that article I explained that, while the helmet is a neat idea, I was really interested in what [Naim] had told me about his power consumption. To put it the shortest way, he has made his arduino sleep so efficiently, it can be waiting for input longer than the battery’s optimum shelf life.
After that article, [Naim] wrote in to give me the details on what he did to achieve such an efficient system. You can read his entire explanation, un altered here.
Have been searching off and on for a particular app note that I wanted to share with you but could not for the life of me find it. Seeing your post I bit the bullet and spent the last few hours searching and finally located it. The document is
Designing With Logic
from Texas Instruments. The interesting part is Figure 5 (will explain why a little later).
A dive into the low power operation of Arduino hardware
Started with the basics. Made sure all LED driver pins were in the off state by default. The removed the load resistors for all of the feedback LEDS I could not switch off like the one connected to VCC that wastes power any time the battery is connected. As an implementation note, I actually turned SMT resistor sideways and left them connected by one pad. Makes it easy to reinstall it if I want them later.
I had planned to not use the onboard voltage regulator from the beginning because the quiessent current it use is huge 100+ uA. The shield I designed and built used a lower current (50mA vs. 250mA) regulator since I was planning to use it only for the control electronics and sensors. The high current LEDs would run directly off of the higher voltage without any regulation. Since the micro and sensors draw 12-15mA max when fully on 50mA was way more than enough.
The expected current draw for my system was:
Voltage regulator: ~5-6uA
ATMega328p: ~1uA
CMA3000 (@10Hz w/ wakeup): ~10uA
Total: ~16uA
Note: The testing below was done on both an Arduino Pro Mini and an Arduino Fio with similar results. The bike helmet prototype was built on top of an Arduino Fio.
To get the device into low power I started with the Arduino example sleep sketch and went through the guidelines from the datasheet to try and figure out why it was drawing so much power. The Arduino was using ~420uA when the chip is while the data sheet claims
Knowing that I went ahead and bypassed disconnected the supply from Arduino battery input, connected it to the input of my ultra low quiescent voltage regulator and connected the output of that directly to the Arduino VCC. Current system draw went UP to ~155uA. WTF???
Next thing I looked for was pullups on the digital lines for I2C and/or SPI. Not just pins configured as outputs and driven the wrong way but also looking at what weak pullups were intentionally (or accidentally) enabled. I have seen this catch out a number of Arduino developers. If the output value of a pin is configured high, when it is switched to being an input it does not just switch to being a high impedance input. If the digital output register is set a weak pullup (for the AVR Rpu = 20-50kOhms) is enabled on that pin. If a peripheral then decides to make that signal on that input low, the system suddenly sees an increase of VCC/Rpu of current that would not be there if the pullup were not enabled. Whenever I see a system that is some weird multiple of VCC/Rpu off of where it’s sleep current is supposed to be I will look for an input pullup that should not be enabled. In this case with a 3.3V rail a pullup would cause 60-150uA draw. Reviewed all of my code, probed the pins and did not find anything configured wrong. Happy that I didn’t screw anything up but unhappy that i Still have 140uA (of 150uA) disappearing into the ether and sucking my battery dry.
Then I started looking for some of the more obscure types of failures that could be causing this. One of those things that I discovered (then had a crash course on how to fix) is something call “back-powering of digital output pins” or sometimes “pin powering” or “port powering” of a device. Now back to
Designing With Logic
. Looking at Figure 5, if a chip that has digital I/O is powered down (VCC disconnected) then voltage is applied externally to that I/O that voltage can cause D1 on the input or D3 on the output to reverse bias, allow current to flow and feed the internal VCC of the chip with that voltage (minus a diode drop). Then really weird things can start happening. Most current digital chips can easily run at 1.8V (0.9V for some of the newer ones) so if a an external pin is driven at 3.3V and enough current can sneak through the diode, the part will happily keep running on the 2.7-3.0V it gets internally. Found this out the hard way with a peripheral that would never shut down and reset. Was right on the edge and drew too much current to startup by back powering but once running would happily keep running by back powering. Gave it 3.3V and it turned on took it away and it just kept on running. Was super confusing, since could turn it on but not off???
While the output of the regulator is not a digital I/O pin I got to thinking that something might still be going on with the output circuitry. So I cut the output trace from the regulator on the Fio (I just removed the regulator completely from the Pro Mini) and the current draw dropped to 34uA. This gave me a more than 10x decrease in sleep current for a 10x battery life increase. Running off of 1900mAHr AA batteries it should sleep, still doing 10Hz sampling to detect motion, for 6-7 years. With the 9V batteries in my prototype at 590mAHr it is just shy of two years.
At this point I moved forward with the kickstarter comfortable that I could hit the lifetime targets I had set. The current was still about double my back of the envelope calculations but was not going to be a showstopper. It was still weighing on me that there was something in the system that I did not know exactly how and why it was happening. Just yesterday when I was thinking about this again, I found the spark fun tutorial
Adventures in Low Power Land
. While I had independently done the same initial steps while going through this process I did not get to the point of looking at the brown out detection (BOD) and changing the fuses. Given that the BOD consumes 15-20uA I am now very happy with my 34uA sleep meaning that with BOD disabled I should be at 14-19uA. :) For 1900mAHr battery that gives a 10-12 year sleep time. That is well beyond the 5-7 year shelf life of a normal alkaline battery. Any time I am exceeding the storage the storage life and approaching the self depletion time of the battery I am very happy. :) | 23 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "741280",
"author": "rgs",
"timestamp": "2012-08-18T16:34:22",
"content": "why bother with hacking arduino when you can run on 32kHz internal oscilator?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "741673",
"author": "o",
"t... | 1,760,376,767.193453 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2012/08/18/crt-reborn-as-a-planter/ | CRT Reborn As A Planter | Mike Szczys | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"crt",
"monitor",
"planter"
] | It does make us sad to see all the waste generated as we move from CRT monitors and televisions to flat panel offerings. Here’s a way to cut down just a bit on how much is going to waste. [Denizpa]
turned a CRT monitor into a planter
.
The project is very straight-forward. First remove the plastic body from the electronic guts. Next you’ll want to choose your paint colors. While you’re at the home store, pick up a sanding sponge as well. [Denizpa] used 320 grit to sand all of the outside surfaces to help ensure the paint would bond well. Once the paint dried four plastic corner brackets were screwed in place to add some interest to the bottom of the planter. It’s not quite time to plant though, there’s way too many holes in the case to just fill it up with soil. A black plastic garbage bag serves as a liner and completes the project.
No mention on what to do with the guts you removed. If you have an idea let us know in the comments section. | 18 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "741180",
"author": "ameyring",
"timestamp": "2012-08-18T14:46:41",
"content": "I’ve seen variations of it. I suggest punching a few holes in the garbage bag for drainage or you’ll have stinky soil. You can also tape a piece of plastic on the inside of the case to cover some holes an... | 1,760,376,767.331268 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.